Bookends

In 1989, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, my home town, my line of one-of-a-kind, art-to-wear sweaters was on display in a solo show. It was at my college Alma Mater, Seton Hill College.
I posted about making these sweaters back in July, 2011. I didn't mention then that the
day after the show was hung I burst into tears talking to someone about it. It wasn't a joyous
event, but rather brought up a great gush of shame and other feelings I couldn't explain at the time.

Over the years I have done many projects from the crocheting to real estate development with my husband which included completely gutting an old building and turning it into a fabulous and highly successful bed and breakfast, and on to decorating several gorgeous homes as well as sewing complete wardrobes of highly tailored clothes for men and women and children. I decorated for charity balls and fund raisers, worked on women's committees of many organizations, raised two wonderful kids, and along the way, dabbled in many artistic endeavors.

In June, 2009 I took a portrait drawing class in Chicago for 10 weeks. It was a charcoal class and I LOVED IT! I have always been able to do a likeness of people with a ball point or felt tip pen and have only ever wanted to draw weathered trees or faces of people. So this class was right up my alley.

The next summer, having drawn portraits of everybody I knew and then some, after spouting some silliness about not being good enough or ready or whatever, I decided to give oil painting a shot. I went to my first class with pastels and asked the instructor if he thought I should just stick to that. He had me do a live model portrait with pastels then gave me a shopping list of paints and brushes to buy for the next week class. That was June, 2010. I haven't stopped since.

I have thrown myself into every single thing that was going on along the way and maybe this is just the latest, but it feels great. I had trouble selling the sweaters back then. It felt like
asking someone to approve of me. That feeling isn't there for me now with the paintings.
The joy of doing this can't be easily put into words but I love showing my work
and am not ashamed to get paid for it.

After all these years of self-searching and doing some really hard work on what makes me
tick, today, when I hung my solo show of oil portrait paintings at City Hall, Ft. Lauderdale, I was
thrilled and filled with gratitude.

Ironically though, it appears I haven't changed the way I stand for a photo.