Again! Another year. My Great Artistic Venture continues, however sporadic and interrupted, with my second showing of art on canvas at the annual North Ogden Art Festival. Saturday, August 13th. At the North Ogden Park (2650 N. 500 E., North Ogden). Last year was the best turnout so far. Small, but delightful. Intimate, fun.
I’m excited. Which excitement is belated, but. Excited!
This week has been a frenzy of last minute parenting amidst artwork. Or it feels frenzied to me, because I’m also still doing laundry, chauffeuring children, fixing cheese bubblies for my kids and company, cleaning cheese bubblies up after kids and company are finished, and buggling Nora when the day is done. “Buggle” is a word Nora invented. It is when I snuggle her to sleep in her bed, or in my bed when Frank is out of town. I suppose any place with a pillow would work for buggling.
But the frenzy. This morning, and I know this sounds crazy, but, this morning, it is a joyous frenzy. I am on a mission. I can do it. I have dreams; I’ve let them trickle through slackened hands for awhile, and now…my hands are alive again and grabbing at strands of joy. I am a mess. Paint all over me. My house is a mess. My kids are happy they can have hot dogs for dinner and not some convoluted nutritious homespun concoction (healthy lifestyle, compromised). Last night Frank picked up groceries for me, since I was up to my elbows in primer and charcoal and was on a roll in my studio (yes, everything at once…it is a great character flaw of mine, the procrastination in combination with the euphoric “I Can Do Everything Before Seven Tonight”—including sewing my sister’s dress). When he got home with the groceries and saw the state of the refrigerator, he cleaned the refrigerator too.
This morning he checked on me (I was sanding burlapped boards in the studio) before he went to work, and noted that I will definitely need to sweep. A lot. Probably forever (the jury is out and sequestered on just what that conversation does for our relationship).
I am trying to settle on a theme. I probably won’t. Still, if I am lucky, I will settle on no more than three themes, one for each wall of my little booth. (I am booth #23, by the way). I am in the mood for trees. Not so much flowers this year, but maybe. And definitely in the mood for faces. Because my life is full of buggling with Nora, I am bewitched by children’s round faces and mother’s contented eyes.
I am back into burlap as a ground for my paintings. It has seduced me, permanently I think. I love how scumbling oil over burlap conjures Modigliani’s moody, beautiful forms, and…. Cassatt’s pastels. The pastels she did hurriedly the last few years of her life, her sight almost gone. Her strokes were quick, emphatic (might they have been pleading? frustrated?), and yet, in the end, the paintings are beautifully delicate.
A good metaphor. Which I will explain later…it kind of makes me want to cry. Ok, I’m done… I have to get busy. Back to the joyful frenzy, and hopefully I’ll see you there next Saturday! Please come! And…Good luck, Lynaea! It will be seven before you know it!
