The third floor of the new place.
Dormers and angled walls.
Quiet and views of roofs and trees.
I have a huge studio near downtown but here I am on the third floor working in a space the size of a small rug. I click in Mozart on the mac and it's all magic.
A painting I thought I had ruined comes back to life, a little tougher but better than before.
Like I said: it's all magic.
How many years have I been doin' this??
Suddenly, it's all acrylic and fairly small.
The same subject repeated with small variations on the theme.
Here they are. My private Idaho.
To me they are a magic window. I know that the moment I put them out there...
the criticisms begin. The suggestions. The complaints. Like so many artists my age,
I've been in retreat.
But now I'm itchin' to get out there again........
My gal has a cold and I reach for a super weapon: my friend Sue's spicy garlic soup. Three heads of roasted garlic, fresh roasted and crushed cumin seeds, chipotle pepper.
It was sunny and almost fifty degrees this first Sunday in February. What a winter! Despite the sweet weather it was time for soup medicine.
I'm not much of a cook and this took all of my concentration. Garlic and onion: what a miracle.
In the end not as spicy as Sue's but still homemade good with a kick and a hope that the head cold might be diminished somewhat. Soup made with love for love.
The second month in the new place and it's starting to feel even more like a home. Settling in to things and having less to fix up or pick up or pack up.
Sometimes I think that I could live almost anywhere. Especially with a sweet sweetheart and a teen teenager....such as I have. And two cats - one of 'em wonderfully nutty.
This becomes home and shelter. A fort to remember beauty and love in while watching the madness everywhere roll on as it always has.
I haven't lived with cats in over a decade. Now my gal and I have moved in together and she has two cats, Tex and Ralph. My stalwart daughter soldiers on despite cat allergies.
How different from dogs could these guys possibly be? For one thing, they're nocturnal, which means they like to wake us up as much as possible during the night. Ralph loves to come into our bedroom and shake extension cords or rattle a shelf, trying his best to roust us out of bed and towards the kitchen to feed him.
Tex is tightly wound. Maybe a tad neurotic. He startles easily and is wary of almost everything.
Ralph, on the other hand, is really large and long-haired and easy-going and somewhat comical. He's a Curly of the cat world. He's loves getting into paper bags and boxes. He gets up on hind legs when you're at the kitchen counter and he bats his head into your leg to let you know he wants what you have. When he gets too matted and has to have his hair shaved he resembles a small lion.
Ralph is a character. One of a kind.
Being a self-employed artist ranks up there somewhere between Popcorn Specialist and one of those guys seen foraging for who-knows-what with a metal detector.
I've been a full-time Decorative Artist for almost twenty years now and the roller coaster ride has been truly something to behold. I've made a grand in a day and less than that in a month. The recent economic tsunami has not exactly been smooth sailing when you're working in the luxury trade.
So, my pal Sue has come to the rescue of late. She's on a roll and has been hiring me and another artist. Sue loves traditional mediums and is a specialist with lime plaster. I first learned this craft from her almost a decade ago. It can be grueling and tough on the old limbs. Unlike many modern water-based wall finishes, these plasters are - more than anything else - extremely subtle. They don't "shout". They hold their ground....beautifully and elegantly.
We just finished a master bedroom using Grassello, which is a finer-grained version of Venetian Plaster. This finish has a plaster stencil embedded between two coats of Grassello. Then a burnished wax finish is applied.
Lime plaster is a centuries-old technique. It can be used outdoors. The layers chemically bond in a tough-as-hell surface. I like that it is so old. In my studio I'm doing paintings now in acrylic rather than the oil I've used for decades. I like it. But I love the ancient stuff, too. Old is good.
Out with the old and in with the NEW!
I have left a sweet place with a kitchen the size of a closet and moved to a truly sweeter 100-year-old Victorian house with a really large kitchen. We occupy the second and third floor.
Today I got the curtains up in the kitchen and things blossomed.
Tex took advantage of the unusually warm winter weather and climbed onto the window sill.
Finally, I feel equal in a living partnership. Equal with ease and joy and anticipation.
At any time of life the unexpected happens. There ain't no script. It takes recognition and appreciation of those wonders that meander into our spaces.
Who knows?
