Empty nest in studio

It's time to get back to the studio, empty nest and all.

THE EARLY YEARS

In one we had the whole world in front of us... and 5 years later we had our homestead.

Waiting

Watercolor.
Is this the way to love?

House of Lies

This is living with an addict.

Smell the Roses

I made this wood and paint construction while the babysitter held my son. I was desparate to understand what I was going through and needed to make art to get there. This forest features a giant rose and an exhausted mother in her house shaped space. She needs to turn towards the flower and breath deeply. 

Though I loved being a mother it really stripped me down to my skeletal soul. Does falling in love make your vision narrow and yet open your body?

Nests in the past

I love these two paintings... even though they were painted in times of struggle. I felt very alone building the nest... even though my husband worked the farm and was managing the addition onto the house, I was often alone. It felt as though I had really gone out on a limb being a wife and mother.  The long narrow painting was about Time and the midnight care of my son that probably connected me to other mothers across the globe. I consoled myself with the thought that while I was up nursing, rocking, and living without sleep, other women were in their own houses doing it too. I collaged individual panels of house shaped wood panels so that we would really be connected.

nest within barbed wire

I did this in the late 1980's. It is three panels hinged together in the back with copper tabs. I was trying to convince my husband that having a child would be good for us. i remember wandering across the farm past the edges of the fields and finding nests in the crooks of old tires, in barbed wire, thorned hedges and junk piles. I knew you could build a thing out of beauty even if it were a trash site. I think that is what I am best at- Making something beautiful out of something ugly. In fact, I have rarely seen anything ugly...
Angry is ugly. It is hard to look anger in the face and keep my strength.

Marriage in retrospect: Juggling act

Moving through the storage I have flipped through stacks of paintings made over the years and found most of them to be reflecting aspects of my marriage. While my mind and heart seem to conflict on this one, and my spouse and I trade insanely different memories of the same moments, my artwork has definitely captured some truth to where I stand. I think I will post a few of them.

This one was called My Marriage is a Juggling Act... and yet... I wonder about the ominous fish in the waters and the ability of my man to catch me. With the way my hair is painted I feel as though I am actually being thrown up into the space rather than down into his hands.

Stormy weather

6 x 6 inches

There has been a bit of a storm going on as I figure out the relationship I now have with the man I married 22 years ago. He has moved away and yet wants me to be his wife. I am exhausted and my heart and head conflict. I can't place any text in this one. It's stormy, to say the least.

EMPTY Nest

Time pours on out

My son the afternoon he left for Military school. He is holding his grandma's hourglass. I love being his mother. I cannot believe how my baby can be so grown. His big toe is the size of his whole foot when he was born.
6 x 6 inches