I am not entirely sure why I created this site, other than to display my paintings and share my thoughts, ideas and insights with the hope that others will find me here and want to participate! The amazingly positive things that happen in our individual lives as well as the most devastating create who we are at any given moment, and I believe that by expressing it all in some form, it not only helps us, but is a viable means of helping one another, too.
I am one of the very few people I have ever known who can truly say they have loved their work for over 30 years, yet it is true for me and I know how lucky I am to feel this way. I spent years continually updating the content in my classes to keep them interesting and informative, as well as finding new ways in engaging my students. I always strove to have students complete my courses with more than just the grade they earned.
In the fall of 2023 I completed the final university course I plan to teach. I don’t feel that I am done in the educational field, however, it’s just time for a different venue. Maybe this is it...or at least a stepping stone in helping me figure out what comes next.
A few years ago I assumed that I would continue teaching for 5-10 more years, and because I taught solely online beginning in 2006, this was an interesting and likely possibility. Then, in 2021, I experienced the worst day in my entire life when my daughter died. My energy has waned significantly since then, and I decided to retire, but not 'quit'. As long as I am still 'here', I have a great personal need to be relevant in my own ways and that has always included art and creativity in some form.
Getting through each day, regardless of how wonderful it is, now always contains elements of sadness, heaviness and varying degrees of despair. If I’m not careful, that cloud can overwhelm me with grief. I am acutely aware that it can happen instantly as easily as it did on that horrible day. This is not likely to change, as many people who have lost a child have told me. It doesn't get 'better', you just learn hope to cope better....sometimes.
My daughter is an integral part of my desire to continue sharing what I can and also continue evolving as a human myself. If you read about the Memorial Painting I did for her for Dia de Los Muertos in 2022, you may get a glimpse into why I can feel her right here beside me.
SOME POSITIVE RESULTS OF THE PANDEMIC
Getting out of your comfort zone isn't ever real comfortable. We all know that. Then there are those times in which we have little choice.
1. Towards the end of the pandemic, I was talking with a guy who owns an outdoor equipment store. He said they had many new customers who had never come in before the pandemic and they were buying things like bicycles and racks for their cars, kayaks, day packs, tents, etc. OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT!!!
He said that the majority of their customers had always been college students and the popular women's sizes were 0-4, however, the newer clients were older and sometimes larger than the 0-4 range. All of this indicates that people who used to spend a lot of time indoors were going out and finding new things to do because of the lockdowns. Several of the new customers had told him exactly that.
I wish it hadn't taken a pandemic to cause this shift. As with most things, we either embrace change as best we can, try to go with the flow and find something positive out of it all, or we fight backwards and that never turns out well.
2. Something I saw happening several times was the birth of a desire for a 'restart'
A student I knew who was in her mid-thirties in 2020, lived in California and was devastated (her word) when she was forced to stay home because of the lockdowns. Then...she realized exactly what she was missing.
Those three things had defined her life outside of work and family and she became acutely aware of it and was not happy about it. She really didn't really have any interests or hobbies, and she set out to find some. The last I heard she was exploring things that she very likely wouldn't even have thought of doing if the lockdowns had not occurred. This is becoming an increasingly familiar story...and all I can say is hurrah...there apparently was a plus side of all this for her!
1. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton
2. “Creativity takes courage” – Henri Matisse
3. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
4. “You don’t take a photograph, you make it” – Ansel Adams
5. “A picture is a poem without words” – Horace
6. “The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke” – Jerzy Kosinski
7. “Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein
8. "Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science" Edwin Powell Hubble
9. “There is no creativity without vulnerability” Brene Brown
10. "Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence." Magdalena Abakanowicz
11. "Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both" C. Wright Mills
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