My five year old daughter came over to watch me paint. She looked at the picture and asked, “Are you going to paint the powerlines?”  My answer was yes, because they are a reminder of reality.  That life is many things at once and that even in terrible times there is beauty.  The powerlines create their own pattern, their own interesting tale. They are not to be erased to pretend that a perfect sky is all there is.  This piece is about not pretending.  This piece is about acknowledging reality.

I just (finally) finished a painting that I have been working on for 6 months, or two years if you count how long I have been talking about working on it,  talking about not working on it,  or flat out deciding against it entirely.  It has been on my mind for so long, it is hard to believe it is actually complete...

...tucked in the back of the closet of my room at my father’s house was this big black portfolio labeled “Vanessa’s art.” It turned out to be paintings and drawings I had done that my mother kept. From my very first brush strokes as a kid all the way until my college freshman collages that I made (while avoiding my philosophy homework) to decorate my dorm room...

Back before I had kids, I was a project manager in the tech industry.  And I loved it.  I wasn’t an artist trapped in a day job living a lie, I actually really loved it.  I was good at it and the goals were clear and the outcomes predictable (even the part that something will always go wrong).  There was satisfaction in helping projects along and getting things done.  I worked a lot and I didn’t mind it, it’s just what I did.  I remember a meeting with...

So have I told you about my zebra? No?  Okay, here goes.  When I was in 4th grade we were each assigned an animal to research and create a painting on a large piece of cardboard (better than the project we did on a piece of asbestos!  It was the 80’s…what did we know?)  

...The day I started working on the painting was the day that David Bowie died.  It was devastating news. Like so many people out there have already expressed, David Bowie represented more than just his music, he was a beckon of light, a role model to be true to yourself, even if others don’t understand you.  After hearing of his death, I started to listen to Bowie all day every day.  So the canvas I had created to honor my mother became the canvas I painted while honoring Bowie instead....

I can’t tell you what I’m working on.  Nor can I confirm or deny that I am indeed working on something for a relative for this holiday season.  But for the purpose of this post, let’s assume that I am.  And if you are a relative, and reader of the blog, just ignore this whole thing, go about your business, move along, find something else to do...

When I was in college, World AIDS Day and Day Without Art were an important part of my college calendar.  It was a day to raise HIV/AIDS awareness on campus, and mourn the loss of many artists.  I had friends who were equally passionate about the issue and as devastating as it was I remember how we’d come together and the somewhat hilarious times we had trying to blackout the art around campus late into the night in prep for December 1st.  Even though my campus days are long past, every year, in some small way, I try to participate in World AIDS Day.  This year it is with offering this remembrance....

Doing what I say I’ll do is important to me.  So closing in on 2 months since detailing my block about my painting, and nearing 3 months since I recommitted to doing it, and rounding out a year since I planned it, and the fact that I am still at a standstill is very disheartening.  I have tried to get it done, I have gone through the motions, I’ve gotten my supplies, I’ve stretched and prepped my own canvas (for the first time in 15 years) and yet it sits untouched and looming over my art space.  A reminder of what I said I would do and a reminder of my failure to do so.  I’ve stopped going to my desk entirely because I don’t want to be faced with it.  As a result, I haven’t created a single piece of art in more than a month....

A few weeks ago I posted a project review and established my next steps.  The first step, tackle the painting on my project plan that I didn’t want to do. 

I was committed and I was going to start but…I made more excuses.  “Let me just finish up these drawings I want to do first.”  “I’ve got this wood panel already prepped, let me just work on that.”  The excuse art, as I’ve come to think of it...

For many years I was a project manager.  This is not something that ever leaves you.  It seeps into your normal life.  Like that year you used MS Project to make a Gantt Chart of Thanksgiving dinner tasks (true story) or when your 6 month art project has gone on 9 months you start thinking, “It’s time for a review!”  Talk about successes and failures, lessons learned, and next steps...

I have been having a bit of trouble getting this post done.  There are many things in my mind and what I think I want to convey keeps shifting.  A long time ago a friend of mine, after reading a 50 page short story I had written, said, “You know, you don’t have to get it all in there.”  I’m having the same trouble here but I’ve tried to whittle it down....

For my son’s preschool auction last year, I painted a painting.  It felt like the first piece of “art” that I had done in a really long time.  I wasn’t even thinking of making something until, one day, talking to the director of the school I mentioned that I had “a background in art.”  That was the expression I had settled on to describe my complicated relationship with making art.  It was behind me.  Past tense.  Over and done.   A part of me, but history.

“Oh,” she said, “You’re an artist!” The words made me flinch a little, like allowing myself to be called an artist was fraudulent in some way.  “You’ll have to donate something for the school auction!”  The words sent panic throughout my body but I managed to utter a tentative, “Maybe.”...

Since my last post, I have driven 1500 miles on a ten day road trip, had a 4 day stomach flu, nursed children through the stomach flu, then head colds, and then rounded it out with my own midnight trip to the E.R. (I’m fine now.)  I think I’m supposed to be telling you about all the sketching from the passenger seat I did on the road trip or how when you are dehydrated from stomach flu colors are so much more vivid, or how the 5 hours in the fluorescent lighting at the E.R. gave me inspiration for my next painting.  Yeah…none of that.  Instead, still struggling to get back on track, life’s minutia has taken me over and I am exhausted...