Eighteen.
Good luck number where I came from. Chai—not like the tea—but like a hard “H”. Means Life. And it seems like a lifetime ago since I was a full-time artist. 18 years ago, I had a car accident—limo driver full of rowdy teenagers burned a red light and caught my tail end as I went through the green light. Took a while to recover. And though the physical injuries healed many years ago, what was lost has taken a long time to get back. Some hand-eye coordination, strength in my left arm, steadiness in my right (taught myself years ago how to draw with both hands), depth perception, confidence… yes, mostly confidence.
At first, I was miserable. because I missed drawing and sculpting so much. After a while I got used to a new life without art and 1 year became 5 then 10 and 15… and the old “it became too difficult to leave” set in. I wanted to come back to art…. sort of. I suppose it would be accurate to say I was afraid of what a new life in art would hold for me. Could I ever even draw again? I fought the desire to come back, and I played with the idea on
and off. And then one day, hubby and biz partner said, “Enough. You’re driving
me crazy. You’re miserable. Take a few days a week and draw.”
Within days of making up my mind, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think straight. All the ideas and projects and visions all returned. Like the proverbial floodgates opening, it was time. I could procrastinate no longer. I had to face my demons and start over. That brings us back to 18. Because that’s about how many months it took to teach myself how to draw again, and paint, and sculpt and see. Practising day after day, over and over. I also started back at photography after first dabbling in it at the age of 18. At first, I couldn’t even remember what an F-stop was for! Haven’t gone back to stone carving yet but that’s coming up soon on the list—and likely welding, too—I miss that. I’m also enjoying exploring the digital world and experimenting with the all-too-popular world of NFT and merging it with my other 2-D work, and I’m curious to see where that will take me.
Right now, I’ve created a Covid home studio that’s a far cry from my old ones, but it’s a place to work and we needed to renovate that part of the house anyway. Thankful for an outdoor Gazebo when the weather is fine and then I can’t paint, draw, sculpt, shoot fast enough. I’m working like crazy to build a good body of work to have an exhibition soon because there is so much to do and so much to talk about in this amazing and fantastic and crazy world we live in today. Frankly, while I am drawing and shooting images all over the place throughout this pandemic, I’m mostly focusing on interpreting life around me and trying not to get the floors too dirty.
Suffice to say, I’m back and I’m home and this time it’s for good.
