Saying Goodbye

 

Luther   watercolor   13 x 9.5

Eleanor...a sketch 

Within the past year, both my mother-in-law 
Eleanor and my father-in-law Lu have passed away.  She was 94; he 97.  All of my memories of them are activated by the many sketches made of them over the years at our visits.  "Luther" (right), is a recent watercolor done from a sketch made a decade earlier.  

I love my sketchbook diaries as they represent me to the fullest:  the searching; the finding; the visits; the moods and a bit of experimentation.  

Too Complicated

I have dozens of sketchbooks.  And, since our current sense of time and scheduling has been seriously challenged, I have found myself meandering through these small journals that have taken me on many journeys throughout the years.  They are diaries to me.  And....I have found that my freshest and most appealing observations have been found on these small pages.  They have seen me through vacations with family and friends, through the births of grandchildren and to emergency and waiting rooms at various hospitals. The sketches are often unfinished and imperfect, yet somehow hit the mark.

This is one of my favorites:  an 87 year old woman in the waiting room of a knee surgeon who kept saying to her companion (over and over again):  ..."and that's another example of how things are too complicated these days".
The year:  2012.

She had no idea.

Sketchbook Skeleton

Skeleton from sketchbook

I rediscovered this sketch while searching for an empty page to work on.  I have many many books.  Some have been destroyed.  But most maintain the status of a treasured classic on my shelf.  These books represent, to me, the realm of possibility...ideas carried through to painting; ideas discarded; tender drawings whose success was totally unexpected.  Even pages with a line or two, brought to a premature ending due to the temperament of the model, or my own impatient mood.  Either way, I love them. 

What would you retrieve from your home in the face of disaster?  For me...my loving mate....and then my sketchbooks.

They represent a playfulness, a lightness of spirit that easily evaporate when met with the rigors of the leap to paint. 

This drawing was done from a live(?) model.....a skeleton housed in the public school art classroom where I teach on Thursday evenings.