closing of summer

It's almost labor day. One month exactly till I turn 25. August is almost over. The GP has come and gone. It doesn't seem possible that another season has come and gone already. Granted, living here is like a crap shoot. We will probably still have 70 degree days till mid November, but it's on its way out. I don't know if anyone else feels it, but I do. The change. The transition. The descent.

To most people, fall and winter are just one more part of the year. To me, without the earmarks of school structure, months just keep bleeding together in stretch of repetition just makes them new and old all that the same time. Notice that there are no holidays from May to September( saved for the two that mark the beginning and ending of summer, and Independence day smack dab in the middle.) No one needs holiday in the summer because they are ON HOLIDAY.

I can feel it sneaking up on me. The gaze fixed on my daily outlook and ambitions for the above and beyond. The mornings are getting farther away each day. My 7am drive to work to do stock was greeted with the first peek of sun cresting over the trees as light shone on my face. Now, if I see sunlight before 4pm, it feels like good fortune rather than the norm.

I'm hoping getting back to some routine will keep me above water. Working in retail, that is wishful thinking. It gets to this point every year.. its just coming early this year. I can't take the dim grey for with sparse sun for the next 6 months. i don't mind to cold and rain, but the sunless sky teasing me with light each day is discouraging. There is a delicate balance sitting on a razors edge. I'm hoping I can create a wider birth for the downfall. The August attempt to make some changes happen, seems to at the moment to have just been not as productive as I had hoped. Devoted to "working at this, here and now" has taken the helm over " I can do better." True, foundations for potential change have been lain, but till something comes to fruition it just appears to be one more "pipe dream." " It's nice to have a dream." What good does it do anyone to dream if they do nothing to make it become more than that? That is neither here nor there...

August is almost up. I'm still holding out that the kings will soon change for the better. There has to be something good coming. Otherwise, what the hell has all this been for? I'm a big believer in experience over advice. Living the suffering and making the mistakes means that you own them. They are yours to keep and refere to. It provides me with humanity and geniune empathy. The nights I have prayed that things would change, the days I have spent looking, the hours spent hoping... I don't know what to make of them. and I don't know what is coming next.

Failed.

It is finished. It's at a stopping point. Its far from the point of no return. I don't like it because of what it became. I started out as this thing that I was so proud of and excited to spend time working on. The constant evolve was enticing and inviting. It was something that had possibilities for a magnificent finish...

Now, after weeks of work, I hate what it has become. It is just this thing that I wanted to finish. I wanted it to be over and done with so I could move on to something else. It became this reminder of what I still lack. It became something I no longer enjoyed, but dealt with...

How does that happen? This complete reverse. It has happened before, and it is hard to explain. It's the road block between me and total confidence in the things I make. There is a point... There has always been a point for me... A point beyond which things will change drastically in one direction or the other. I think back to when I first started playing basketball( a LONG time ago), there was a moment when I was tottering on the fence and something pushed me to one side. I started out confidently, knowing that I was still learning and gaining sportsmanship. As each game came and went without feeling like I did something positive, the good momentum started to dwindle. I think I scored 2 points that whole season. I could nail shots like the rest of them, but for some reason, I lost confidence ( or thought others lost it in me.)

No one likes being a disappointment. Most people would prefer anger and hatred to disappointment. The look in someones eye when you walk through the door after a night of partying, or on your coach's face when you miss the shot. Its there. That sick feeling in your stomach that is your body internalizing the insufficiency.

So I stare at the piece of paper which has some how acquired the ability to make me feel inferior, and I think to myself, " why couldn't you just be better?" Also wondering if it is thinking that of me. I know I am. But in the time since I left school I have realized something that changes the tone of the things that I consider a failure: It is just one thing, one time, one more step in the process to getting better. Don't expect everything you make to be breathtaking works of art. Its more likely that you will down right hate some of them, but it isn't worth it to not try ot stop trying just because some THING doesn't pan out as you had hoped.

This one is done. On to the next.

Portraits

For that last couple of months I have started working on portrait again. I started with my family members, and since my immediate family is only 3 other people aside from myself, I naturally ran out of subjects quickly. So I opened the door to friends and relatives, asking if anyone would want a portrait done. I had a friend that I have known for some time, who has been in and out of my life since high school. And he asked, so I went ahead and began working on the first piece. Being that he is a really great subject (objectively) I used him for more than one. Now that I have completed or nearly completed those two, I have started on another of my Grandma.

I came to a point tonight when I had to sit back and ask, "why these people? why not strangers?" Back when I first started toying with the idea of doing portraits while I was still in university I looked at the approach to so many done by masters. There were guys like Schiele who used prostitutes. There were those who used their wives and mistresses. Some used their children. Some used the geriatrics. Some used the invalids. It all boils down to the same thing though... where their hearts lay at the time. "Where your effort lies, there your heart will be also."

Whether or not I want to admit it, these people illicit a response from me. I know that my family is more important to me than anyone or anything else, so I understand why they were chosen. I guess it boils down to my choice to pictorially describe them. These people all mean something. (In case you didn't know, things mean a great deal to me even if I don't advertise it.) If anyone were to look back on the lineage of my previous portraits, they would see that the people in them were special to me in a way that I didn't really know how to describe in any other way. I mean I can say the words, but it fails to convey fully all that I think and feel. There was even a time when I did a portrait of one who tugged at my heart strings, but who I also knew would never reciprocate the longing. I titled it " Unreqited love." Seems silly now knowing that I was 19 and thought I had an idea of what that word meant. Words fail me often. I try to pinpoint the depth of all that surrounds this one thing.. and it never fully gets there.

The people I keep in my portraits are people I want to keep around. Lately I don't get to see them much anymore, and this way, they are here if only in spirit. Sometimes that is enough.

Its time for something to change.

With the impending change of turning 25 which I know to some seems like an eternity down the road, and to others it seems like just yesterday, but to me it marks an end of something. It happens for everyone sooner or later. It's that moment when one realizes that she is no longer just drifting. I don't want to drift any more. It has been a continual revealing of just how much I had left all the things about my life, in someone elses hands. There was no consideration when I chose to study art ( though I tried to sound like it was absolutely the one thing that would make my life complete, when really it just happened to something I was mediocre at, and thought to myself, "I might have a future in art because I suck at this the least of everything else." Someone please tell me how that was good reasoning? Thank God I chose a school that actually valued the education that they gave to their students. It gave me the shot at possibly getting things I never knew mattered to me (IE: grad school, or a MFA in Art history or Art Administration, or some other of the sort.) But for the here and now, I've chosen to make something where there was nothing.
I have come upon that moment when there needs to be a change, otherwise inevitably I'll end up married to the second man to ask, with 4 kids, no life of my own and nothing by lost dreams and soccer mom hair. I do want some version of that reality, but not here, not now. I've gone for too long without those things which keep me centered. Love, Affection, Water, Surf, Sand, and Sunshine. I was glaringly obvious when I finally went home for longer than 2 days that weren't full of shitty weather, and I ached for what I had been missing. It is inexplicable how much shit can transpire, but as long as I had a place to go, things don't seem so terrible.
A while ago I was circling around this same idea- that is the idea to move to Florida- and its clear now that the reasons for going are much grander and more elaborate than a misguided crush... its about finding a place that makes ME happy. For once in my life, I'm going to be fucking selfish and say that I want to live on the beach. I want to have water. I want to have the option to watch a coastal sunrise and sunset in the same day. I want a tan that doesn't come from a bottle. I want to feel the heat on my skin and the breeze across my face. I want to feel like I'm not floating along according to fate's agenda for my life.
It happens for everyone... that moment when they decide that they want to have a LIFE not just a series of days. I want to own my life, and love each day solely for the fact that I get to be around to live it. It's not something to waste wondering and putzing around hoping that maybe, just maybe, something positive or fruitful will happen. I know the small things I want. The simple pleasures that I want to be apart of my life daily. So here's to conscious change for the better. Here's to being a grown up. And here's the knowing the difference between having a life, and having pipe dreams.

The one I wish I could finish.

Earlier today....

"last ditch effort... i have never struggled so much with one piece. I may just light it on fire."

To which I was asked in response:" so is it the art that you would be burning or the symbolism?"

If one could be a cure for the other, I would do it. If it was as simple as lighting a piece of art on fire. If it would end an unfulfilling infatuation, I would gladly make that sacrifice. If it would sever attachment I would suffer the loss of time and effort. The piece itself represents so much that is not alluded to. My dedication to detail, the adamant attention to realism, and now in its present state, it is the product of 2-words too late. It has been almost 3 weeks working on this one piece, and from the start it was supposed to be something that was a release and enjoyable for me. Doing portraits and landscape drawings have been the very things which have kept me grounded when I was about to lose it. But this piece... It started as a venture into something new ( which was the tattoos- and that part worked) but now I feel as though I've had a taste of a commissioned artist trying to please his patron. ( last time I checked this was supposed to be just me building a body of work, and since I did 2 of the same person, I was allowing this one to be taken.)
So that does beg the question... what would I be burning: the art or the person in painting?The piece it self represents something new for me since college and ultimately as sad as I would be to see it go, it is just a thing. Paint, pencil and ink. They teach us to not be "precious" about things like this because in the end it is just one thing. There will be others, even some that are more successful in achieving their goals. But the person in the painting... the person in the painting. That boy. He, as the model, represents himself but also others who are just like him. He is the symbol. He is one more person I have captured in a painting because that is the one place they can always exist for me. People have been something of a commodity lately, hard to come by. At some point art has to be done. There comes a time when it has met the expectation of the creator and one can finally put down the brush and step away. Sometimes I wish I could do that with people. Maybe that has already bee my unconscious pattern with people (friends.) They come and go with ease, and I am less reluctant to let them go on with their lives than I am to allow some of the men in my life. I am more willing to fight for a man who's affection has an expiration day rather than fighting for the people who are ultimately my "significant others" till I find the one. (the irony is, most of them already found him first it seems because now I find myself out of a job.) The person in the painting is one more person in a long line of unrequited sentiments, but also is an earmark for one more dream unfulfilled.

So what do I burn: the art or the symbol?

Ultimately destroying this piece will not accomplish anything worth while, except to give me an excuse to start work on something else. The piece will still be a point of contention till I can finish it and the boy in the painting.. well, I don't know about him. But what I do know is that I will finish this piece as best I can, and send it off, and continue on with making things.

I have missed this place.

Sand. Water. Waves. Calm/ I wish I could wake up to this everyday. Hear the tide, the eb and flow of each crashing crashing on the sand. Its noise, but it's quite and constant. No one really quite ever understands what I mean when I tell them how much I miss this place. Love happened(happens) here,mourning happened here, healing happened here. The very things which have the ability to shape me down to my raw material came from here. Yet there is nothing here- no vending machine for romance, or box of Band-aids on the waterfront. Its just me, the water, the sun and the sand. Not exactly the recipe anyone thinks of when they start thinking of ingredients that will make all three things.

But it is just the same. It's the peace of being next to something which is bigger than me. Something which is not controlled by inconsequential things. It changes but it also stays the same. It looks like it has no ending, but you know that ther other side is not far away. It makes me feel small and safe. Even at night, when all the tourists have gone home and the sun has disappeared, the horizon line is dotted with boat lights. Its not getting to the end of the summer and that means that soon classes will begin and the dark grey days of winter are soon to reappears. I can't stomach another grey haze taking over for 6 months. When there is no other small source of joy ( no trees, no flowers, no sunlight, no life) it drives me to a desperate place where I start to feel completely alone. I know that this is all most likely symptoms of SAD, but how do I avoid the slump? I'm ready to find a place where life doesn't have to settle into hibernation.

I have been longing for a place where sunshine is a daily occurrence, not once a week or once a month. I want to look like life is abundant and ever growing rather than dwindling.