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Friday, June 8, 2012

Honestly, Encouragement, Truth and Friendship



 I wanted to follow up on the last blog post before I started to minimize the significance of an epiphany I had yesterday evening, which prompted both this posting, and the previous. 

Last night I was working on a painting for Hot Summer Nights at Arbor Crest in July.  This is the largest piece I have done, and I am committed to its finish.  After working on it for several hours, I sat down and looked at my progress.  And then it hit me. 

Like a baseball bat.

Like a ton of bricks.

Like a nuclear bomb. 

Her words rang clearly in my head.   

“Focus on painting.” 

Staring at this enormous canvas tilted on my easel, I saw it for the first time. What she saw. What I couldn’t see.  I saw it now, but she saw it then. In the beginning.  At my first show. 

She must have said it to me more than once, during different occasions. Otherwise, I would not have carried this advice with me, in the back of my mind, over the course of this past year.  

“Focus on painting.” 

I was put off.  Couldn’t she see what I saw in my pastel drawings? 

Forget that she hated my frames, brightly colored, mismatched and haphazard. 

“Focus on painting.”

I wanted to rebel. 

I thought she was just being bossy and condescending; using her artistic and literary credibility to act superior.  

I procrastinated.

I kept playing with pastels.  

I begrudgingly and intermittently painted.  

I don’t know when it happened, but I found myself painting almost every day; my beloved pastels collecting dust. 

And last night, I saw it. 

And I understood. 

She saw something in my paintings not yet developed, and of which, I was unaware. 

A depth, she said last night.  

Last night, staring dumbfounded at my canvas, I realized she was my friend. 

Aren’t you glad I said that, she said last night. 

Yes. 

Yes I am.

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