Hello out there…

It has now been about two years since I last posted, and I am sorry about that.  But not too sorry, because I have very gladly cherished the time I have spent with my daughter.

Was I craving to paint this whole time?  Yes.  But I also know the kind of painter that I am, and it doesn’t seem to function so well when I have a very limited amount of time and space to paint.  I need a block of time, not just half an hour’s here and there.  While painting, I can devour hours as if they are minutes, and I don’t feel like painting if I don’t have that block of time, not to mention the contemplative time afterwards.  So if I knew that I had only an hour to set up and paint, I usually opted not to, as I had this strong feeling that I would only feel terribly frustrated.  I tried a couple of times, and it made me feel that I would never paint again.  Plus, I thought, painting just seems so silly compared to being a mamma.

So I picked up knitting needles and tried to satisfy my creative impulses in yarn in the short spurts of free time I could find.  I think I have now knitted about 50 sweaters and a couple dozen scarves, hats, shawls, cowls, with a very large blanket in the works.  I can now do lace, cables, fair isle, intarsia, slip stitches, top down, bottom up, contiguous sleeves, steeks, write patterns, pretty much you-name-it.  It has been very therapeutic, exciting, and inspiring.

But oil painting is so very different.  And sooner or later I was going to need to start again.  And I have, just at a different pace, maybe getting a block of time once a week.  And my material this time around is my backyard of Napoli, an urban masterpiece of mess.  I can’t go over it, and I can’t go under it – just have to go through it, as the children’s book goes.  So I am including a few images of works in progress as I stumble and trip my way through this forest of Napoli.  I am feeling very rusty, which I think is pretty evident in these sketches, but I somehow feel that I am veering in an interesting direction.  Only time can tell if I will persist on this quest or climb back under the covers and hide.