A NEW BEGINNING...all over again!

NFDP

No, I'm not appearing as a guest on the series "Hoarders," although it certainly looks that way. Obviously, I make no effort to hide the fact that I'm not the best house keeper in the world, although I am trying to improve. In fact, back in the day, my mother assured me the reasons trial husband left were directly related to—not only my near constant struggle with the scale—but also my lack of cleaning skills. If that's what keeps a marriage going then I'm totally hooked up this time.

Anyway I'm starting over, again! More on that below. Let's briefly cover these photos. The pink..."actually magenta...what was I thinking"...room is my studio. That I don't use. As you can see, it's not tidy. Artwork, boxes, and supplies lying about, I need to step over them all to get to the computer or the phone. The green room is the store room that used to be a guestroom. As you can see it's impossible to walk into. Discarded there, for the present anyway, are dreams of jewelry making, sculpting, and incredibly tasty guitar playing along with haphazardly strewn canvasses and supplies from wall to wall. I do keep my current work safe in another room however so there is some growth there. Over the last year, things just got out of hand, completely. I've taken everything on the floor out of the room, several times, with the intention of going through it all and making nice, but inevitably time would run short during the day and I would have to shove all the stuff back and close the door because company was coming.

I watch a lot of HGTV while I work. I glance up at the "before," work while listening as the crew faces the inevitable road block that threatens every project, and then look up again to see the tidy, shiny "after" at the end of the show. Anyway, I'm now envisioning  my very own before and after and I figured this time, if I make it public, I just might get it done. Yeah, I know that hasn't helped before but that's what a new beginning is all about isn't it?

On a deeper level of thought, about admonishing myself...yeah, I know, I almost never do that...for making yet another new beginning, an epiphany..."why not another new beginning?" Shall I continue patterns that don’t satisfy just to avoid the "shame" of yet another new beginning? It's like a female friend I had years ago with a lot of facial fuzz. She wanted to get rid of it but didn't want it to look as though she had shaved. I asked, quite innocently, if she preferred it looked as though she hadn't. If you stop to think about it, a life without frequent new beginnings and changes can look very hairy.

These new thoughts come courteousy of some changes I’ve made recently and a sincere wish to feel good. Not better. Better indicates an incremental struggle is pending. No! Good is what I want to feel. I cannot control what's going on around me, I need to grasp that. I actually believe that if I sit quietly and let go of all my thoughts for an hour I should be rewarded by the Universe by avoiding a painful, bloody toe stub as I leave the room immediately after. Whether or not the stub was my unconscious intention is a discussion for another time, but BAM! all that hard-earned peace, shot to hell by taking one step!

But that isn't it. It’s about accepting what is and moving on. There was a film out a few years back with Alec Baldwin playing an actor making a movie in a small village in New England. He was a bit of a hound and after a boozy, sex filled romp with a townie, he crashes the car they were riding in. Luckliy they’re both fine and as he emerges from the car and rights himself, he looks up, brushes off and says.... “Well, That happened!” And then he’s off to the next thing.

Clearly that’s an extreme example, but, what if I stubbed my toe, felt the pain and moved on instead of taking it as a sign from the Universe that I’m not meant to be at peace!

Himself and I had great “speaks” this A.M. over vittles. I’ll skip the gooey, self-serving “he's my best friend” rhetoric and just say that I’m really, really, really hooked up here. Anyway, we were discussing art. What a surprise! Since I’m painting upstairs, still...can’t seem to leave the AC and the flat screen..the day’s work is staring us in the face as we relax before sleeping. The paintings, happily and sometimes unhappily, are the subject of much discussion. Most of it is himself telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing to the work we’re looking at, but this morning, for reasons I can't define, my defense reflex was apparently asleep at the wheel because instead of shooting back some snotty response, I listened to what he was saying. He wound up an insightful and interesting observation about my work with this phrase...You need to define your palate and define your point of view.

U-freakin-reaka! There is was! Startlingly simple! Direct and glaringly, embarrassingly obvious! I've never really heard what he was saying before. It's amazing what we can hear when we actually listen and are ready for a shift in perception. 

So I'm going to define my palate....not forever and not for every painting and I can change it whenever I want...and define my point of view...which I can also change whenever I choose. As of now I'm planning a series of eight canvasses, not sure if the sizes will be uniform or varied, of groups of people painted loosely from a palate consisting of raw umber, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow and white. Simple and direct. Again, we'll see but this feels very exciting to to me.

Enjoy the rest of the day.