Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days-Day 1

One of the ways that I can see to help put my life back together since Richard's death is to get in my studio daily and work...paint, draw, whatever.  I have had trouble doing that on a regular basis during this first year due to the obvious grief and mourning.  He was ill for a few years and I was his primary caregiver for sixteen months before he died last August.  The painting I have done in the last twelve months has been grief oriented and I have finished some pretty powerful paintings of my husband during his decline...powerful for me and my adult children.  Only a few people have seen them.  I found I could 'touch' him and it became cathartic and it was a way to 'touch' him.

Early in August  I had read Leslie Saeta's invitation for artist's to join her in her challenge of Paint Thirty Paintings in as many days and post them to her website each day.  I thought for me personally it was the perfect thing to help me get going again.  August being the anniversary of my husband's passing last summer and tomorrow being the two year marker of my mothers death.  I need to work and needed this very challenge to help me have the needed deadlines with the hope that I begin to turn to my studio more and more.  I am out of practice on so many levels.  I therefore look to this challenge to oil my painting technique, a beginning again if you will.  So with that said, I have been looking forward to the start September for a few reasons...and here we are.

My theme for the month is to paint the ordinary, the everyday, the things I over look in my quest for the perfect subject, which of course usually stops me in my tracks.  Maybe even explore parts of the whole.  We will see.  So I started with a pear.  My go to when I could not come up with anything else because my mind was so full of my husband, his illness, and our future.  Pears were safe...