About a Meaningful Life

I was ready a few days ago to write about what “home” means to me but the inspiration waned when I didn’t set to it right away. I don’t remember what I was feeling about it then. That’s the key. I need to have some sense of the topic, otherwise I’ll bore myself and my readers. Painting is like that too. One needs to catch it before it passes by.

Something that stirs me now and again is the expression “a meaningful life”. I quoted here before the words of writer-psychiatrist Irvin Yalom who speaks of life’s “givens”: death, isolation, groundlessness, and meaninglessness. He offers a choice of certain stances: to be “resolute” or “engaged," or courageously defiant, or stoically accepting, or to relinquish rationality and, in awe and mystery to place one’s trust in the providence of the Divine.” And then, elsewhere, he says: “The question of the meaning of life is, as the Buddha taught, not edifying. One must immerse oneself in the river of life and let the question drift away.” 

A meaningful life is not, I think, easily defined as a happy one or a morally good one. Most of us (and I speak of this western culture) make consequential choices while very young, choices that inform our entire lives — about schooling, career or vocation, spouses, having children or not, about where to live and work. We might make big changes later, but it all adds up; it is our story. Some of us make such big mistakes in our youth that the potential for a fulfilling life is lost. Looking back at my own life it seems I made most choices as I floated along on that “river of life” and operated partly as I thought was expected of me and partly provoked by some romantic appeal, responding to life’s questions as they appeared. There was no general plan. So there was marriage, children and a teaching job and life away from the US. All very rewarding and enriching. It was not until I was in my mid-forties that I stopped one day and said (to myself) “Hey, wait a minute. This isn’t my life.” I suppose that maturity, responsibility and the beginning of self-awareness begin when we realize how fast our lives are happening. There just isn’t as much time as we thought there was. 

Dostoevsky said: “It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.” A life altering decision or crisis in mid-life might be far better than to reach old age and feel that one missed out somehow. How sad that would be.

Is it this time of year when I read of the wackiness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday that my thoughts turn to meaning in life?

The image above is Red-Blue. It is a new, small (17" x 11") acrylic collage now hanging at the Piante Gallery in Eureka in the Abstractions 2011 exhibition.

About Gratitude

Today is one of those days when I need to search for a topic to write about. I have been racing to get some of the new work ready to frame for a Christmas group show at our local Piante gallery. I have to deliver right after Thanksgiving and will do my best to have it all ready before the family convenes and happy chaos reigns. There hasn’t been a lot of time to think.

Behold! I knew if I just started to write the topic would declare itself. What better than to focus on gratitude for this good life? When I am about to spend time with the family I think about the miracle it is to have raised four children who have become responsible adults. The world seems to me so full of threat, tragedy lurking around every corner, that the fact that all four have reached middle age free of major illnesses or accidents, or a life of crime or addiction, seems nothing short of wonderful.

I didn’t know I wanted children. It was the fifties and I took for granted that was how my life was to play out. And so they came and I’m glad now that I didn’t know I could make a decision about it. I might have opted to devote myself to painting and not give away all the time and energy a family requires. I could make a list of women artists who followed that path starting with Mary Cassat, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’ Keefe, and including writers Joyce Carol Oates, Gertrude Stein, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf and many others in all disciplines. Of course the list of famous artist mothers might be much longer but I can’t seem to find that list on the web. There is a good documentary about the artist/mother: Who Does She Think She Is ?, but none of these are household names. There are many in the movie business, but as in the film I just mentioned, the marriages are not often long-lived and there are endless accounts of neglected children.

To paraphrase writer Susan Rubein Suleiman, perhaps the greatest struggle for a woman artist who has or desires children is the struggle against herself. No amount of money, no amount of structural change, can entirely resolve the fundamental dilemma for the artist–mother: the seeming incompatibility of her two greatest passions. The effect is a divided heart; a split self; the fear that to succeed at one means to fail at the other. I might have reached greater heights career-wise had I remained in New York after graduation and stayed with painting to the exclusion of most else. Who knows? I might even have become a better painter. Maybe our psychology (or biology) somehow protects us from regret; I have none. If I could go back in time with the knowledge I have now (and modern means of contraception) I would again bring these four into the world. There’s nothing selfless about doing art or about procreating; both are selfish activities. The world certainly has enough paintings and more than enough lives. But no apologies for either indulgence. They are what make my life so good.

My children might argue now about where my priorities really are. But hear this, dearly beloved ingrates: the only reason I don’t turn off the telephone in my studio is that one of you might need me for something. Though very often that something is a recipe. A friend remarked that for this chapter of my life: “All you have to do is show up.” Not completely true as I am still in charge of turkey, stuffing and gravy. But no complaints. Cooking feels like time off for me now.

No blog post next week:  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

P.S. Now that moving is a sure thing, I am selling earlier work that I am not actively marketing at a 50% reduction in price. This includes some of my personal collection. Just call or email to set up a time to visit the studio or for any questions. 

The image above, Exposure, ©1996, is one of the paintings included in the moving sale. It is a mixed media collage on canvas, measuring 17” x 44”.

About Inspiration

I write the original draft of this blog essay on Thursday mornings, come rain or fog (not much shine where I live). Today I have an MD appointment (nothing critical) at 9:30 and hope to get something substantial written before I have to abandon the project for a while. Sometimes there is something I’m full of and I’m eager to write before the excitement wanes. And at other times, I have nothing in mind and am hoping to find inspiration in my own thought processes as I confront the blank face of my computer or else I look at notes made in the past about possible topics. Unless there is something that I find appealing, the outcome is of doubtful interest to my readers and unsatisfying to me. On most occasions, however, there is something that I can get into. As anyone who knows me can attest, I am rarely at a loss for words. Or opinions.

The question is: “Why do it at all?”. When I started this blog in October of 2009 (It’s been two years!), my intention was to use it for marketing my work. It soon morphed into me just talking as I am not fond of marketing but found the writing a pleasing self-indulgence. Not very different from painting. So why not just paint which I believe I do a better job of?

One of the several answers I came up with is about growing old, which can be scary. It’s not just about its being the last chapter. It’s about losing the person one was. We joke about the memory loss. It is funny, sometimes. But mostly it is an impoverishment. And the noticeable diminishing other strengths follow along, gradually if you are lucky. So the blog is like the exercise video, the careful choice of foods, the vitamins, and the MD check-ups.  Keeping a grip on the powers we still have. To stay vitally alive for this precious piece of life that remains. None of us really believes that we will come to our end. But at the same time as we refuse to lend it credence, we struggle against it and make an effort to hide the symptoms of our decline lest somebody believe that we really are old.

Wherefore I am about to design and renovate an almost 1000 square foot studio, a bit larger that the one I am in now. Me downsize? Why ever would I do that? Time marches on and so do I. Damn it.

After Thanksgiving I will start preparing the move. I think the first part will be to start tossing anything that I really don’t need. I have trouble getting rid of stuff so I will need to steel myself for that operation. Maybe I need to ask myself about the why of that.

From music critic Ernest Newman: Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.  

The images above are more of the current mixed media project. These are the smallest, measuring 8” x 11” each, and still untitled and unfinished.

About Transitions

Summer is definitely gone. No doubt about that. People seem surprised that I still say that in November; I do have some difficulty with transitions. I rather like to keep what Is familiar and good and am not really comfortable about what is ahead. I’ve seen some of the forecast for our winter weather. Looks like lots of storms. So? I have experienced thirty winters in Humboldt County. Storms? What else is new? I still love this place.

It’s change that unsettles me. Feels for a while like walking on quicksand (even though I’ve never done that). When my children were small I thought I would like to keep them that way. They were mine then and one day they would be their own people. My father looked around at my family back then, and said: “Enjoy this now. It’s the best.” He was right. But they grew up; they got smart, and I still like them. And this is still the best. I read history; I read biographies and life still surprises me. People have been watching their kids grow up (if they’re lucky) since our beginnings, but life is new in every life.

And now the change and transition that I am heading into is keeping me awake at night. A new home, a new studio. I’ve been where I am now for sixteen years; it is home. My studio has grown in its contents and the work has evolved and it is still the place I want to be. The place I submerge into where time stops, the world doesn’t turn and I am totally in charge. The radio is silent except when I want some music, not often. I love silence. I jump when the phone rings but don’t turn the ringer off because too much isolation is scary. I know I can recreate this space. Even better. And I can make a home again. I have done it before. The change from Brooklyn to Caracas, from single to married to unmarried, from Venezuela to Humboldt County, California. Always these were the right moves. Or maybe I have just been a good adapter. Still I wish I could fast forward to being settled into my new digs. 

The work is going well. Probably in part because there was the “now or never” feeling about resolving this series before is got disrupted. It is resolved now. What remains to be done is to mount these paintings on sturdy surfaces (on some kind of lightweight board or on canvas) as they are each composed of several parts. After that they will need to be studied carefully for color to be adjusted, design element added (or not). There are sixty in process so it will be a long lasting and gratifying project. One that I am loathe to put aside but will be happy to get back to later.

I think about those to whom change comes in the form of great loss: catastrophes of weather, war, epidemics, fire. I imagine the aftermath of a tornado and surviving to see everything that was your home and community blown away. Somehow people deal with it. Nothing short of amazing.

William Ralph Inge, writer and priest said: “When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: "My dear, we live in an age of transition."”

The image above measures 23” x 17” and is still unfinished, unmounted and untitled.

About Friends

I was twenty years old when I left the US for Venezuela and forty-five when I came back with my four teenage children. I left good friends behind here and went on to make deep and lasting friendships there.

The newer friends were mostly the people I worked with at the university, two single men and the rest of us women married to non-American men. We all had friends outside this group but this one was essential; we spent time together at work and away from it. The two women I became closest to were, one a Brit, the other Venezuelan. Before I left Caracas, Pat left with her husband to eventually settle in the Basque country where Juan had roots. Carmen died a short while later from a brain tumor.

After I settled back in I was able to see two of my original old school friends a little more often even though they lived on the other side of the country. Then Susan was lost to lung cancer. I painted what I called “Little Houses” then and at times of grief afterwards. They were safe places for me when my mother left me behind in kindergarten and now I painted them for my friends. I painted prettily colored tombs for them. No need for places of the hereafter to be dark and grey and cheerless.

One by one my ex-patriot friends drifted back to this country. I don’t think many of us had intended to come back. It just happened. And a good thing it was since Venezuela does not now offer the good life it did (at least for its middle class and above; poverty was and is rampant). We keep in touch, some of us better at it than others, and have since met a number of times to have sweet reunions.

My homecoming plan was to devote myself obsessively, passionately and solely to painting. No time, thank you very much, for socializing. This piece of life I would do on my own. Friendships take time and energy that I couldn’t spare any more. I dedicated myself to making a solitary and productive life. In the meantime my kids became adults (miracles happen) and they became my friends, my support and good company. And after a while I let myself be lured out of my studio. Loneliness won out. Without making any special effort, the friendships happened. I wasn’t aware of how real and strong they were until recently when I started talking about moving. So many sincere offers of help. People willing to give me the time and energy and whatever else they could to ease the transition. I have been grateful for a lot of the gifts that have come my way. This one is huge. How could I ever have imagined that I could survive without friends?

Albert Schweitzer: In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

The image above is Cloister, ©1985, acrylic on handmade paper, 30” x 22”. It is one of the first little house tombs.

About Transitions

We’ve made an offer on a little house with a big space for a studio. I am envisioning myself in this new space, set up cozily with everything in place and happily at work.

What comes between my well organized present situation and that rosy future, is daunting. I am by nature orderly. I hate to be focused on the task at hand and suddenly find that the tool I need is not where it should be. My experience with moving is that however well you organize it, some thing(s) always go missing, some things get broken and it is a time of converting order to mayhem and then putting it all back together. What comforts me now is the vision of a far better and more functional studio than the one I’m in now. This is one of many times in my life that I have wished for a magic wand.

The situation is complicated by the need to keep the business part of my operation unhampered. I will have a print in the Artful Home Christmas catalogue and need to be prepared to ship within three days. I am committed to twelve linear feet of wall at a fine local gallery (the Piante) for a Christmas group show, the work in progress now. I will have to stay connected to the people that I have consigned work to; there was an emergency last week when a painting arrived in Boston damaged, but that sot of thing is rare. What is not rare is that someone needs images for a presentation ASAP. Which means that I need to stay connected. All of this is doable. My friend Richard used to say: “Nothing to it, just a lot of hard work.” And in this case, a lot of thought given to the logistics, not where my aptitudes lie.

There is also on my list a grant I should apply for, deadline coming right up; I need to upload the new quartet to my web site and send the images to consultants who make the sales. And more.

But by far the most awful part of this is that the studio process will be disrupted. I am trying to put off feeling that grief. The work is going so well that most of the business stuff I mentioned above has been delayed anyhow. This morning I planned to get this post done early but I went first to the studio to complete a small task and was seduced by a collage painting that wanted attention. 

I have always thought that one day I would smell the roses. They will fade and bloom many times before I am ready to do that.

The image above is of the front room of the studio, taken a while ago. The work on the wall is different now, the rest about the same.

Below is the collage painting that grabbed me this morning, on the left. To the right are color “sketches”. 

About Death in Life

I count amongst my friends people with all levels of education and of life experience. But I cannot think of any that would readily enter into a discussion of death. It’s easier to converse about sex, money or the skeletons in the closet.

I want to know more about how people regard it and their feelings about it. I think if I could get used to talking of it and hearing others on the topic, I might find myself a little more comfortable and resigned to what undoubtedly will be my fate. The two people who have entered into the topic with me were helpful and I turn to the memory of those talks sometimes. My late ex-husband spoke of his return to the earth as if that were a good place to be. He grew up on a farm and was known to embrace trees. I grew up in Brooklyn; we went to Prospect Park or the Botanical Gardens to see trees. A therapist spoke to me of death as sleep — without dreams. Their untroubled acceptance of the inevitable was helpful but not quite enough. 

Since I was ten years old and saw photos taken in the extermination camps of the second world war, I have walked hand in hand with death. Not threatened; I have always expected to die a natural death. But always aware of the limited time I would have. My appreciation of that reality has influenced every choice I have made and every risk I have taken. While it was an early and traumatic awakening, I am grateful for it. Every moment of my life, difficult or comfortable, has been okay. Every person I have loved has been cherished. I am endlessly grateful for this life and plan to leave it only against my better judgment. Maybe even kicking and screaming as I go. 

In his commencement remarks to Stanford graduates in 2005, Steve Jobs said this: 

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

In his last piece of life, Jobs opted to spend the time he had left with his family. When his biographer asked why he wanted his story written, he said he wanted his children to know him, “I wasn’t always there for them, and I want them to know why and to understand what I did”. Maybe if he had his life to live over he would spend more time with them. Then again, maybe not.

Life in the studio is good. I usually need to squelch the monster that looks over my shoulder and derides my efforts saying something like: “You think anybody is going to believe that’s a painting?”. I do need to sell the work so the monster is always ready to pounce. But somehow, maybe because I’ve been thinking along the lines of the comments above, he has not made an appearance for this project. I’m moving along smoothly and with greater than ever freedom. It’s that what-the-hell attitude that supports dicey choices. 

In the image above are two examples of the series in progress now. It’s about small painted panels adhered to larger painted panels, 23” x 17”, mixed media. I am doing about forty of them to be mounted on archival board. There are some bigger ones that will be adhered to canvas. I will present them here as they come together.

Alice Walker – “Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.”