I've been gone, in a way....figuring out how things work without my mom. She died on November 9, in the hospital. Yet, it was sudden and without much build up. It was a death I'd been bracing for, on and off, over the years. Of course, the hit came just before the holidays of family gatherings, followed by the bleak solitude of a Wisconsin winter. There wasn't much to cushion the impact.
I dipped in and out of my studio. It was disheveled from the last fall's final push of the art fair season. Everything was in heaps. My head could not handle the chaos and my body was too exhausted to restore its' order. I hurt. On top of that, we had my mom's apartment to empty. Painting had to wait for me to catch up. I had tried to paint right away. I felt pressure to encapsulate my fresh grief. However, the attempt was overthought and lame. Then came the numbness. I'd push paint and water around on the surface of my paper but it was without passion, only something to prove that I was being productive.
Slowly, I began noticing pockets of clarity and genuine patience. For me, winter is a time to paint bones, feathers, nests, eggs and other such static subjects. But these things seemed too stagnant. They just lay there. Then, I got a blue jay. A friend had given it to me, after they found it newly dead. It was so perfect and undamaged and this allowed me to position it any which way. Unlike the other things, this bird had vitality, depth and soul.... even though it was perfectly not at all alive.
Touching the blue jay, combing back its' feathers reminded me of my mom. I was gentle with it like I was with her. My mom's body was her enemy and she fought it hard for a long time. I was one of her back ups. I caught her as she stumbled, helped guide her arms into and out of coats, scooped her off of the floor, hitched up her socks, her pants, fixed make up, buckled her in. I examined her arthritic knuckles to see if the swelling had gone up or down. My mother's hands made me nervous, because one day, they might be mine and they looked like trouble. I'd do the mental math to guess at how many more years of competent brush holding I have left on the timer. "Don't dawdle." I thought. "Get to work."
The paintings are starting to come together again. It has been slow but productive. I am searching more, planning less, and letting things reveal themselves. I ask for patience and will not be posting much available work because I can't handle the pressure of making a product right now.
