Grieving

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. ~Pablo Picasso. Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. ~Stella Adler
I quit smoking 13 years ago and for a couple of years afterwards, I would find myself rummaging through the refrigerator, craving something, not knowing really what. I didn't think of smoking and didn't associate the cravings with wanting a cigarette, but I think that the cravings did have something to do with a important part of my life being gone. I think the same is true with grieving. When I feel blue, I don't think "I miss him, boo-hoo," but grief must be the root of my feelings. After a wonderful lunch with friends today, I spent the afternoon crying. I have ceased trying to explain it; I only accept its the way it is.

Onto Picasso's quote--art as a diary. There are stories behind every painting I do. This one is The Superstitions. I started painting it the first winter we stayed in Apache Junction, AZ. A man named Nelson owned a auto salvage yard at the foot of these mountains and he wanted a large painting of it. I let my husband talk me into doing it in exchange for a Dodge van, which we desperately needed since my Toyota died. As my brother-in-law, Bobby used to say, we were "financially embarrassed." I never attempted a painting that size --2 by 4 feet--in fact, I had very little skill in painting-- and it took me almost a year. I carried it back to Oklahoma and worked all summer on it and the when we returned to AZ the following winter, we gave it to Nelson. He had never expected to see the painting, or the van again. By they time I was done with it, I was sick of it--I like it now, though. So this magnificent painting hung in the living room of an old mobile home in the middle of a junk yard. I don't know where it is now.