Sunday 15 June 2014

GOING HOME...


 

I’ve been out in the bigger world, outside the home cushion of the USA, for 11 years now; and I have come to realize in the last few weeks, that actually, it’s time to go home.  Not because the world has become too big or too difficult – believe me, it might just possibly be MORE difficult to be “home” – but because much as I love my life in Europe, I miss New Mexico, I miss my family, my loved ones, I miss relating to friends on a daily basis who have the same life experience as I. I want to spend time with my Dad while he can still remember me (he has Alzheimer’s).  It was really brought home to me this past week as I read Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I had tears in my eyes many times as through the pages of that incredible book, I relived times that had been my own experience, HOME!  I  am painting intensely in my 16th century Braeton house for the summer, listening to music that reminds me of home, and planning just how I’m going to achieve this huge shift.  Once again, it’s time to leap off a cliff – one equally as big as the one I leapt off of when I moved to Scotland!  I have to raise a large sum of cash to achieve this as soon as I possibly can.  I have to move my horse, my cat, some paintings (some will stay in Scotland or France because let’s face it, I have a global business!!), a few boxes of books and the family mementos and photos that made life away from them easier to bear (my Navajo rugs, Apache baskets, pueblo pottery, my Mother’s apron, and my childhood panda bear). 

In the meantime, I intend to keep painting furiously; to make the best of this time I have in France; to explore a bit more as I get ahead of the financial game just a little.  Leaping off cliffs into the unknown to make my art sing is part and parcel of living as a full-time artist for me.  This leap back home – as soon as my finances will allow – is another big step forward and will, I hope, make it easier for me once again to travel the world to paint, to find new and better markets for my work, and to maintain those markets I have worked so hard to create in Scotland, England and the rest of Europe.  Made possible, I know, by making a stable place for me to be.  And with all this change, there will still be the terrible wrench of leaving my friends and family in Scotland (I know, I know, I’ve already left, but not really.... not until the last box goes, and the cat is back with me and Dancer in our new home).

When I first began this blog about the adventures of being a full-time artist in this difficult world of 9-5 jobs and consumerism, hard times for living without a tough outer skin, I’d not realized how much of the inner journey I’d feel the need to write about!  But the inner journey of an artist is actually MORE important (to me anyway) than the outer!  In the meantime, enjoy a few more images from my incredibly productive summer!!
Old Nice, Like a ripe melon... 14 x 11 in., oil on board, £1,000.00

Thunderstorm approaching olive groves, Le Castellet, 16 x 24 in., oil on canvas, £2,000.00
 
 

 

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