Today, I did something I’ve been contemplating for quite a while: I deleted my Facebook account. Permanently. Poof. Gone. There are many reasons for this and I may discuss them in a future post. Suffice it to say that I must conserve my time. This is partly what enables me to turn my attention again to this website, and upload fresh art and content here, with a focus on art, faith and the mysteries of family life, going forward.
It’s been an eventful four years. Here is what I did since I last updated this site: found myself painting my first ever nautical-portrait for a pretty accomplished local art collector bobbing along in the Puget Sound; took on a commission to paint ‘The Stations of The Cross’ in fifteen installments (more on that later); traveled to Europe; got engaged; lost thirty pounds; planned my own wedding (this was more challenging than childbirth); got married; traveled to Europe again (makes sense, since I married a European); got pregnant; took several birth classes and studied a library on natural childbirth in order to allay my anxiety; gained forty pounds and transformed into something resembling a watermelon stuffed into a suasage-casing; temporarily ceased all painting out of a disproportionate dread of poisoning my developing baby with toxins; gave birth (in the hospital with some difficulty); recovered slowly while figuring out how to nurse a newborn and be married and be a mother at age thirty six; got the hang of it; lost some of the pregnancy weight; resumed painting and teaching (for about five minutes); got pregnant again (by then my body resembled a leather bag, deflated and then re-inflated again like a wine-skin); traveled to Europe (this time, with an infant); flew to Tucson to look for houses (then found out we would stay in Seattle for the time being); experimented with decoupage; interviewed every homebirth midwife in town and finally hired one; moved out of married student housing (my husband finished his PhD); gave birth to my second baby (in the height of the pandemic in the basement of our hastily rented house, with great wonderment); made the decision, with my husband, to leave my beloved Dominican Catholic parish of ten years to join a parish that offers mass in the Traditional Latin Rite (there may be more on this later); learned how to be a mother of two children under two; started drawing again to keep my hand in it, and found my children to be a fascinating new subject, as long as I give up total control;
and now...
More recent work will be uploaded soon. I promise. Having children has changed everything. Parents will attest to this. Everything I do now takes double the time. Most things are done with my one free hand. Like typing this sentence. Constant interruptions are a way of life now. Gone are the days of dissapearing into my studio for hours or days at a stretch, brooding over ideas, anticipating the start of work, obsessive focus excluding all else until the work is complete. Things are accomplished now, if at all, in five minute spurts. They have to be. Time has become a precious thing that I do not own. I’d tell you more about how this has changed the some of the qualities of my work, but just now, I am compelled to nurse the baby down.