Full Circle

It has been ten years since the last time I had an art show during ArtWalk.   As I hurry about preparing for the show at the end of the month, my thoughts return to those days a decade ago.  Tony and I had met and became friends through an art critique group.  Tony was writing short stories at a fairly regular clip, while I was painting these large, cumbersome watercolor paintings.  Over the past ten years we tried to keep up with writing and art making, but both of us had become too caught up with work, then a baby, to continue working on anything.  For many years I had concluded that I was just not an artist.  That was that.

Over the past six months, I have been quite surprised and delighted to find that both Tony and I have returned to our creative selves; although we each struggle to find the time to work on our projects, and balance this work with all our other demands.  When I asked Tony how he felt about creating again, he said he was very happy about working on his current story for a public art project and that he felt it made him a better person.  Being thoughtful about writing has helped him to be more thoughtful about life, including his relationships with me and Mogs.  However, he noted that he felt pretty spent trying to do all the things that life demanded (his words were: “I feel like I am nursing a heroin habit,” although neither of us know what that feels like…)

This is the solution we’ve each come up with: During the day, I try to work during Mogs’ ever-decreasing afternoon nap, while Tony does a little writing on his laptop during his lunch hour.  After Mogs has gone down for the night, Tony and I turn towards our personal projects, delving into our work with great concentration.  I love knowing that he is typing away at the kitchen table, while I am painting or sewing in the study.  We meet up in the kitchen and check in on one another, but both sort of inhabiting this different plane for a time.  We’ve both reached the same conclusion that the time we spend together now is more focused and we are feeling more present. 

I just received a copy of Soulemama’s book The Creative Family and started reading it a bit this morning.  I’m loving her description of turing towards the creative life once her first child was born.  I know what she means when she writes “[m]y needs were getting met, and I was therefore able to meet the needs of my children even better.”  Although our lives are so much busier and full of big responsibilities, it is within this tangle that we have found our way back to creativity.  

 Preparing for my art show in 1998: