There's a Time for all Things....

When I was in college I realized that life does not always go the way you'd like it to go.  Many of my friends went to college to get their Mrs..  Being handicapped, I realized that that might not happen for me.  I dated some, but not a lot.  So I began to make plans for my future.

I was an Art History Major and my parents had a Gallery which specialized in American Art.   My plan was to go to graduate school and get a M.A. in American Art, so I could write and help my Father in his Gallery.  I wanted to go to the University of Pennsylvania, where my paternal Grandfather had gone.

I distinctly remember telling  a group of my friends, that I did not want to get married until I was at least 24 years old.  To me at that time it seemed like a long time from being a senior in College.  Just as soon as you say you don't want something, things begin to conspire against you.

I was vice president of the senior class and had to take a turn at selling tickets to the senior class dance.  I reluctantly got up in time to set up a table and put up a sign to sell tickets to the dance.  I did not want to do this at all.  I had brought a drawing I was working on, and sat at the table sketching.  A young man walked up a asked if he could sit down.  Basically I said, "Of course, it's a free world."

He asked me how long I had been going to Old Dominion, "four years," I replied.  "How long have you been here?"

"This is my first year," he said.

"Oh are you a freshman?"

  "No, I am a teacher"

Open mouth insert foot.  Nothing like making an idiot out of yourself.

That evening we had our first date.  we went to talent show at school and to a frat party.  To get to the party we had to cross a large puddle, so he pick me up and carried me across. I think I fell in love that first night when he kissed me good night.

So much for all those fancy plans I had made. The next day I took my GRE exam .  I could not concentrate.  I was head over heels in love. We were married later that year and a year later we had had our first child, Christopher.   I worked part time during art restoration for my father at his gallery.  I was busy being a wife and a mother. I dabbled some in art, but nothing serious.

We moved at one point to Vermont.  The two boys, Chris and Scott were getting older and I started entertaining myself with my art, painting still life, in oils. One of the first paintings that I remember doing was of brown eggs and wooden salt and peppers.  I gave this to my parents who kept it.  A local gallery in Vermont said they would pay me $50.00 a painting.  I was busy with family and didn't have time, or maybe I was just too scared that I could not do more.  Looking back we see things more clearly than at the time when things were happening.

.

Inspiration to Paint

Years ago, I got an invitation from a good friend to drive across country with her.  My friend Corliss had moved back home to California to be with her aging parents.  She was recently divorced and needed a change of scenery.  So she had moved back to her home for several years.  Now she wanted to finish up her work on her Doctorate and was moving back to Virginia.  Would I fly out and come back across country with her? Of course I would!

I loved California.  It was the Southwest that really arrested my attention.  I had never seen anything like the desert, the Grand Canyon, the wonderful red rocks,and the big skies.  Everything about the southwest fascinated me.  The majesty of our country, the variety of the landscape was awe inspiring.  I took photos and I sketched.  I painted paintings in my head.  I could not wait to put brush to canvas or panels.  As a landscape painter, I had found a new and vivid landscape to paint.  I was in Love.

We went through southern California first and made the Grand Canyon our destination.  It is impossible to put into words what one feels looking into the depths of the earth at the river far below with clouds casting lavender shadows onto the yellow and red rocks, ever changing, totally enchanting.   This is a holy place. The beauty could move one to tears.  I've never traveled to Europe, but thank God for letting me see parts of my country. Now I yearn to go back and to stay a while and paint.

I have been moved to paint before, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the verdant countryside of Vermont.  A field of sunflowers lifting their heads toward the sun.  A sun rise over one of our eastern rivers, the sun casting it's rosy hue across the lazy waters.  Gathering clouds gliding shadows across rolling hills.  There is so much in nature that wants capturing so much that is ethereal, a willow wisp a glint of light a moment of time that can not be recaptured, maybe by an artist brush?

This is why I strive to paint to be able to impart a feeling, a moment in time forever captured like a rare bird.

Struggling with Art

Recently I have been caring for my elderly Mother. This is a 24hour a day job. Mother was the one who encouraged my art. Dad was my task maker expecting me to always grow in my work. Now I can not get mom to be creative. This all has gone with her short term memory. Fortunately she is still very social. Because I care for her, I have no time to relax and to ponder my art.

Creating art demands a clear head and the necessity of loosing oneself in the process of producing that piece of work. Try as I may I have lost that concentration that is needed.



My art was a way for me to escape and to get me over the hump of my divorce. I found refuge in color and design. It was calming soothing and very satisfying. A way to totally loose myself. Why is it now that I desperately need to find a safe calming spot; I can not.



Quiet is needed. Time alone is needed. Space is nice to have. I have none of these now. Would I change things? I think not. Time with those you love is limited. No matter how confused or needy. I have my Mother and I will cherish every moment. I will again find the time and space and quiet to create.

Growing in my Art

While I was in College I studied under Charles Sibley. Charles was a good friend of my father's and Dad carried some of his paintings in our Gallery. I remember that one day years before, my brother came into the gallery and saw a painting that Charles had done of people. He said quiet loudly,"Who'd want to buy that, the people look dead buried and dug up." Charles was standing there for the full effect.  In spite of this remark,he and my brother later became good friends.

Charles taught me to be free with my art. I took water color from him. I learned to let the paints flow and that there happy circumstances that happen in art. You take advantage of these rather than trying too hard to control the paint. I have not done water colors for years but when I start my oils I am able to use my brush work casually almost abstractly in the early stages. The tough part is knowing when to quit. It is so easy to over do a painting.

Well after college, Charles spent a weekend in the country with just my brother and myself. I believe that I used water colors that weekend. I sketched some with water color crayons applied water and let it run. My colors were bright and fresh.

I drew the flowers from the garden. This led me to doing several free water colors of fresh flowers. I'd plant my gardens with paintings in mind. Dad told me to studying the flower paintings by the impressionist artist, Henri Fantin-Latour. He was known for his wonderful flowers. I copied his work in order to better learn how he did his flowers. Another thing that aided both my brother and myself in our painting skills was the fact that we both did restoration of oil paintings with my Dad in his Gallery. In order to in paint, where a painting has been damaged you have to be able to match your strokes to that of the artist. You learn a lot about painting doing this.

My advise to anyone wanting to paint is to start. The first steps must be taken in any endeavor. You have to start or you'll never do anything. Once you start it is amazing what can be done.

putting art in my life

After playing with art. I tried oils. In College, Old Dominion University, I took courses in water color, and printmaking, for some reason I did not take oil painting. Another course that I took was basic design. We disdainfully called it early morning cut and paste. Little did I know that this was one of the most valuable courses that I ever took. It seemed too much like play. It was only many years later that when working on my paintings that I realized how helpful it actually was.

I was able to take on balance, color, design, and depth perception without much difficulty. I also have to give credit to hanging around my Dad's Art Gallery. Dad had let a studio in the Gallery out to a portrait painter, Ted Tevis. Mr. Tevis took me under his wing and gave me instructions in perspective. He went to great pains to show me the vanishing point using strings to extend lines well off the paper where I was drawing. I was about fourteen and thought that he had gone to extreme; however, it was a lesson well taught. I learned about aerial and atmospheric perspective in Art History classes by observing older paintings and having my Art History Professor, Parker Lesley, point this out in Renaissance Art.

One weekend with my family I particularly remember. Dad brought in easels and oil paints and the whole family painted together. We used photos from National Geographic Magazine to paint by, and I painted a Greek Fishing boat on a beach. Dad took time to instruct and we all enjoyed the process and being together.

I also remember a time even earlier when I was recuperating from one of my operations, as an aftermath of polio. Mother gave me paper a pencils and had me draw a china cat that my grandfather had given me, She showed me how to look a something that I wanted to draw on paper. After trying very hard and much erasing, I turned out a nice drawing of this cat licking his paw. I still have that drawing somewhere. It was hard won and I was about nine years old. I was proud enough to put it in my scrap book. One other thing that I tried as a young child was painting by numbers. I failed miserly, because I could not just fill in the spots I had to do one better. The vase of flowers ended up to be no a paint by numbers, but a Leigh original.