After this strange weekend, with the water, the potential loss of the last remaining paintings from my past, and my beloved dog undergoing emergency surgery as I type, I am left wondering about what things, memories, or beings I should really be holding on to.
This morning I was still feeeling what I guess was nostalgia for those crazy days of being a bohemian type artist, riding the NYC subway with wet canvasses at rush hour, wearing paint smudges even on my underwear, slightly high from turpentine and linseed oil almost all the time and totally buzzed on coffee at all hours of the day or night. There was a focussed and frenetic energy to life then. My responsibilites were few, my energy was really high, I was about 50 pounds lighter, and I painted all the time. I went through a sketchbook a week.
I learned then what is was to work really hard. I learned what it is like to feel so compelled to create artwork that sleep and food no longer matter. I learned how to put my deepest emotion and darkest feelings into the paint, so that even now decades later, I look at the paintings and am immediately transported back to the moment brush met canvas. Happliy the joys still speak louder than the negative emotions.
My life now is very involved with raising a family, keeping a store running in a terrible economy, and tyring to keep my house from showing up on the "Hoarders" TV show. Creative pursuits are relegated to evenings when the kitchen has been cleaned and the laundry folded, if I have the energy- which I frequently don't. Like any muscle, the creative ones will atrophy if they are not exercised. I think I should have fought harder to keep that energy alive. After I get photos of all that art, I hope I am able to let it go. I made it, learned from it, and maybe it's not the actual art I should hold on to.
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