November 17, 2008
I have not made many thoughtful entries in this particular blog as well as my other blogs recenty, partly because life has taken hold of me and driven me to pursue other avenues of communication.
I am trying to be practical and pursue marketing my artwork and my arts administration opportunities, while I paint on deadlines for exhibition's where I intend to sell my work. I arrange exhibitions for other artists and serve as a website facilitator for a gallery while at the same time I am starting an entirely new business this fall which is in itself an exciting adventure. In addition, I have a son who as a senior in high school needs my chauffeuring to his events like football practice, games until he positions himself to acquire his driver's license.etc.
Part of me is very glad I am dizzyingly busy. So busy, I cannot feel the separation of growing children as acutely. My life had been my children, my family. Discussion and activism in geopolitical issues or developing a body of artwork and even building my new company hold a measure of importance in my life. They, I understand have their particular unique fascination, but I recognize that they do not nor cannot occupy the same place in my heart and dreams as do the people in my family, my kin. Even as I have tried to fill my life with these other things, my longing for my family being a community one in spirit and heart has never diminished. The pain of my family’s growing diaspora gnaws at my soul, draining the life from me. The more I do to bring things together the more acutely aware I am of my family member’s desire to be removed from one another, their home and their roots, their parents. Perhaps this is just an inevitable but passing transition into adulthood for them. But I wonder if it is in fact what I have come to see it as that fruit of the fickle reward of wealth, education and upward mobility, the dream of the American way. Little did we know how much we cast aside when we set our children on the American path of success when we should have inculcated love and tenderness toward one another rather than ambition and adventure.
How does this relate to my art? My technical art skill has improved greatly over the years.. My art imagery has not drawn its ideas from my family as much as from the dream of community lived in the light of truth and love.
I am afraid to place my mind’s eye on the pain of separation for hours on end while I focus on meticulously painting of a “telling story of separation and fracture.” Besides who wants to buy a painting of a “telling a story of separation and fracture?”
Lately I think I may have a new opportunity to “tell the truth in a life story full of pathos amidst hope,” now that my mother, who is in her declining mid eighty’s, has come to stay with me for an extended visit. I see I can compassionately tell a story of separation and fracture.”
Somehow, this story, which is so real before me in its human frailty, is striking with hope and beauty because I can be a part of her life at this time. I can laugh and cry and with her and she with me.
I will, in the next months, begin drawing and painting her and her aging friends and surviving brother, etching lines in a legacy of friendship and endurance that I have been privileged to experience through the life of my mother, whom my children have called “Grandma.”
Judith
