I have just returned from 2 weeks of intense art making at Arrowmont, in Tennessee. One of the suggestions of our instructor, Andrew Saftel, was to go over old sketchbooks and incorporate some of the personal symbolism that may be in them. Of course, to go into those old sketchbooks is to delve into the past! Sketches and clippings of friends, travel writings, totally wacked out oil pastel drawings. And dreams. Lots of accounts of my dreams. Almost more than the drawings they reflect the state of my life at the time. Many were of my mother who died in 1996. One dream was of an old decrepit chair that had been left in a garage, ready for disposal. It was a cheap imitation of a more expensive piece of furniture that my mother had always wanted. Maybe that's what I thought of my mother's life- full of disappointments and compromises. Had life indeed dealt her the bad hand she believed she had at the end of her life? Or maybe this is just my interpretation. Maybe we never really know what our parents wanted. And maybe that is their secret to keep.

In these sketchbooks were many pictures of Jamie. Also some sketches that he actually did. Here is a sketch I did of him-1980.

A New Year

We now enter the door of a new year. This holiday was much easier to take than last year. I actually enjoyed much of it, although sadness often comes on those dark snowy days as I am still struggling with aloneness. I finished a painting today that looks something like the crazy work I did when I was in school. When I painted with little thought to markets, buyers, and "prettiness". I watched a film on Patti Smith several nights ago, and I was struck by her lack of vanity, her total commitment to her art, her courage. I think that real genius largely consists of, not only talent and hard work, but bravery. Permission to be gutsy in the face of a disapproving public can only be granted by oneself, but I often think it would be hugely helpful to be in an environment that was friendlier to experimentation and pushing boundaries. The Pendleton has become a building of tricked out galleries filled with safe art, pretty pictures, and poor painters who constantly look over their shoulder at what the market is buying. Very little courage here-although it does exist, in spite of the atmosphere.

New Year's resolutions? Maybe it should be just to paint from the inside out.

Art and the Spiritual

I often think of how the creation of art relates to spirituality. Creating a painting has similarities to meditative practice. The clearing of the mind, while one awaits an image. It's a paradox- that to create a work, or to meditate takes discipline, yet within that discipline one must totally let go and become expansive. I am also often struck as to how many times in painting must I let go of attachments. There will be elements and parts of a painting that I just love, can't live without them! But they are hindering the whole work, they just don't fit. They get painted over, that little area that was so beautiful and precious to me. So similar to life when we like out possessions, our habits, our addictions, our stuff. Can't live without them! But what are they doing to our life's canvas?

So it has been a year. A year since Jamie died. And the magic date has come-and gone. "Don't make any decisions or moves until a year is up". I had a year of solicitous friends who remembered me, invited me, included me. For a while I never wanted to be alone in the house, so if I was not out, I had people in. My friends were happy to humor me, and we enjoyed good times.

So now what? How am I supposed to feel now? No more crying? House totally cleared out? Ready to spread my wings and fly to all corners of the world, independent, joyous and free? Hell, NO! I need an extension to that "year of grief" rule. I am not ready to greet the world as that person that I thought I would be---not sure who that is, but I can tell you, it's not happening. Paradoxically I fear, yet treasure, being alone. I want company but often don't want to leave the house. Phone calls from friends have diminished, but that's OK. Now they are dealing with their own tragedies that I must help them through.

So how much time to "they" allow you to grieve, anyway? I must consult Martha Stewart. I'm sure she has an opinion on this.

Today I made a decision to end the business I've had for 7 years: TheSpiritSource.com. I am certainly not the only one in these times to see a business fold. I have friends who had thriving art enterprises who are now working in grocery stores. And my little, bitty stock illustration website was never a booming business. At best it made some money for artists that didn't have to pay the expenses, and was a wonderful online portfolio; I got several lucrative commissions from it. Maybe the real sadness is in the lack of people that I can really share the loss with. My husband, Jamie, has been dead now for 10 months. I have a son and son's girlfriend who I feel closer to by the day. That is a blessing. But no other family. No parents, no cousins, no real siblings ( one sister who is too attached to her husband to truly care). Friends try, but have there own lives. True loneliness is strange. When problems arise your mind casts around for an anchor, for that person that you can turn to and help you solve it, or at least hold your hand. That's gone. You only find a void in all your searches for that comfort. But there is another side to it: real freedom. Freedom can be a burden. It's something one has to become familiar with, comfortable with. New beginnings are scary. A little like swimming into the really deep water. There's no ground to touch. The shore is distant. The water a little cold. But the sky is wonderous and the horizon stretches out to Africa.

What is the worth of art? What is the worth of one's livelihood? These days the 2 questions are connected. It seems that now, in today's economy, the artist no longer has a right to make a living. While artists are certainly not the only ones struggling in today's world, art appears to have taken a particular hit. In the world of illustration, there are reports of publishing houses that send the staff out with digital cameras to capture images previously created by an artist. Fine art is viewed as fluff, for which no one currently has a use. And then we read commentaries by pundits who think government money to the National Endowment for the Arts is wasted. "Doesn't create jobs". Don't artists, dancers, actors, writers, and all people in the arts have a right to a paying career, as do auto workers, computer programmers, clerks, etc.? What I have studied and worked for in the past 20+ years now has no value. None. All we can do is keep working, and try to break some new ground. After all, if no one is buying, we get to put on the canvas whatever we want.

So tell me. Who is reading this? Absolutely no one, and why should they? I am bereft of even a modicum of talent for anything, much less writing. I have spent a day struggling with a painting, and the fight is finished. The winner: the art supply store, whose product I have just wasted once again. Seems I can only relate to these little pieces, the one I have posted here. A small 7" X 9", it is as delicate as the nutlets it portrays. I have bought several college textbooks from the 1930's and '40's. Their beauty and gentle earnestness entrance me, so much so that all I really want to do is small collage pieces. They work for me. They like me. I like them. Not so the big, lurching canvases and boards that stare at me with much hostility beckoning me to failure. But who has the time-to really look at this work? The little botanicals? The lovely old typefaces, the sublime illustrations, the patient explanation of the workings of a stamen. Only for the artist to behold.