I realized that I have not blogged since April. Actually, I was deciding the direction I needed to take with this blog. I live my life in many arenas. I am no longer a teacher of advanced art in high school. My first year out of teaching was an adjustment and I felt displaced for the whole year. I missed my faculty friends. I missed my students. This August 2018, when I would be back in my classroom, I was actually glad that I had no more faculty meetings, curricular events, lesson plans and tons of academic social events to chaperone. I do not feel displaced anymore but now have all those fond memories of my students who went on to study art in some of our nation’s prestigious schools like SCAD, Cal Arts and Parsons School of Design in Manhattan.
So, I am settling my feet on new ground and trying to get back to painting full time. I also do volunteer work at a Pregnancy Center where I can use my experience as an RN in Women’s Services to help women with parenting. There was a time in the ’70’s and 80’s when the art budgets in schools were dropped and the money was shifted to math and science studies. I went back to college to get my Nursing Degree. However, I still was active painting part time and trying to do some juried shows.
The circle comes around again. After years of hardly painting because I spent my creativity in the art classroom and had nothing left in the evening when I came home, I lost my “edge”. I was frustrated. I thought I couldn’t paint anymore. I painted what I thought was junk. However, I persisted and then something in me clicked like riding a bike. I found my “zone’.
Runners know about ‘zone’. Artists do too. It is the place where everything around us disappears and we lose our sense of time. We become totally absorbed in what we are doing and then something emerges that is like a Eureka moment. I think I am slowly getting back what I lost those years of teaching.
First, I need to work on this web site and add my new work. So stay tuned. I have two paintings I finished this past week. They actually were painted over 2 old works I hated. One has 3 layers of paintings on the canvas. It will probably get a 4th! I enrolled at Crealde in Winter Park, FL to take an advanced class and to get back with camaraderie of other artists. I am encouraged. Please hang in with me. The best is yet to come.