Monday, September 11, 2023

2023 Has Been a weird year. Lots of drama with a capital "D"

 Yep.  Yes. Yeah. My year was filled with surprises, family drama, illness, hospitalization, legal "stuff" and more. Lots more. Because not all of this stuff is mine; I don't own it; I won't share it. But it all started in December 2022 when my sister's daughter, daughter's husband and grandson moved to Florida. That's where I live. Then my little sister came for Christmas to help her daughter settle in. Little sister stayed with us, me and our big sister. I'm a caregiver. Little sister came from Colorado and during the winter, Colorada's geography started to collapse, quite literally. Sinks holes on a major highway was just the start. Then came family drama but not mine to share. Then illness. Mine. February brought me two abdominal surgeries and oh  joy, my para ostomy hernia was repaired but, a week later my ileostomy had to be moved. I was home for six weeks. Little sister became caregiver. Grandson stayed with us and helped. Big sister did her best but she had doctor's appointments and her son and daughter in law had to step in for those. Family is important. We need one another or is it each other? 

In the mean time, I didn't post. I finally drew a portrait of my niece's dogs. That was my return to art. A touch of sanity. I couldn't lift but it  was only a couple of weeks before I could drive. Instacart was a godsend. Not cheap but great. Little sister has trouble walking but she fell in love with the electric scooters in Publix. Big sister has trouble walking. Not me. I can walk. Well, all of this healing and drama and recouping went on until my birthday in the beginning of June. I did a lot with trying to figure out where I was going with my art. Trying to make videos. My head and heart spinning. Just so dizzy. So dizzy. I feel as though I lost 2023 and my blog posts have suffered. I was trying to post at least 2 a month. My aim was one a week. It's September and it's hurricane season. 

Bad news. Little sister lost one of her dogs; a bull mastiff named Bella. Just 5 years old. We are sad.

Lots of other health issues with other Florida family members but we are somehow surviving and what I want most is to make pretty pictures.  I just want to sit in my newly revamped art space (I prefer that to studio) and pick a subject: create a compostion and paint with pastels or draw; or both. Although I do a lot of experimenting I don't want to experiment. I want to work with the medium that is best for me; pan pastels and pastel pencils and I want to work on black watercolor paper. Black paper and I had a whole Big Bang epiphany. Creation came out of the darkness ergo my creations come out of the darkness.

But I really want to blog. I realized just the other day when I finished my last blog post, that, while I'm not the author of the next great American novel I have a decent writing style; sort of like a reporter though I don't see a Pulizter in my future.  

So I hope that... scratch that... I plan to write more blog posts. I would love to hear from you, whoever you are; recommendations or questions or comments of the nice kind. Nothing nasty, just constructive criticism or requests for things you think I can share about art.

Here's the portrait I did of Lucky and Gwendolyn:






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