Thirty Paintings-Day 5

The thing that gets me up is the thought of that first cup of coffee in the morning.  Pretty ordinary but with many memories attached to the act.  I so enjoy it and feel revived like no other drink in the rest of my day.  I am also attached to my mug.  I like the feel of it in my hands.  I am a tactile person always checking how something feels and that includes mugs, bowls, and glasses.

It reminds me the many times we made pots of coffee for each other.  How many times did I wake to being handed a mug of coffee by Richard.  Or how I would set up the pot for him at night for the next morning because he had to get up at a ghastly 2 AM for work.  Having the the pot ready for him to just hit the switch seemed like the best thing to do, seeing as I was not getting up with him.  Almost to the end, while he could still swallow, I gave him a mug of coffee in the morning.  Now it is coffee alone...

                                                               Grey Morning
                                                                oil, 6"x6"

               

Thirty Paintings-Day 4

In my search for an ordinary object which really is not what I wanted to do, the search I mean.  That defeats my purposes.  In ordinary I want the subject to just show up.  So in a way it did today.  Less time was spent in a hunt but I just thought what are the everyday things I enjoy.  A cup of Tazo Zen Tea revives me...so I have a painting for day four.

I am already learning about time management and that I don't but at this point in my life I am not worrying about that.   I am also thinking about some of the things that I had forgotten over the last year and a half of not painting regularly.  I am also beginning to see what I do not want to continue and beginning to remember where I was headed...wanting to free up, use larger brushes, and let go.  I want to listen to myself and not the other voices of what a cup of tea is 'suppose' to look like but rather what I want it to feel like.  So I am taking note...it will all be on this blog for you and for me.  My painting, as I am, is evolving, hopefully.  Thank you for visiting today!

                                                           Last Flower of Summer
                                                            oil, 8"x10" canvas

Thirty Paintings Challenge-Day 3

My garden, for a few reasons,  has not flourished this summer.  The temperatures just never seemed to get hot enough for the tomatoes.  Also the tomatoes were Richard's project every year.  He babied them, picked their suckers, watered, and tied them up off the ground.  He was out there checking them a few times a day.  Gave them what they needed in terms of natural , thank you chickens, fertilizer from which he would make a very stinky tea and feed them.  Then when he started to harvest those beauties he would make the best tomato salad from tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, wine vinegar, and Italian herbs.  It was the best.  One could soak Italian bread into the juice and it was amazing.

I have only planted them and did a once over sucker picking.  I have green tomatoes, still...even though they are the same type we always planted.  One's heart needs to be in to the gardening process,  I believe and my heart was not.  Being out in the yard is very hard with out him as everything is.  So I picked these green tomatoes and painted them.  They in some ways are a visual reminder of his absence in the garden this year as well.  I guess there is always fried green tomatoes.

                                                                Summer Green
                                                                  oil, 8"x10"
                                                                  

Thirty Day Painting Challenge-Day 2

I awoke today remembering it was yet another anniversary of loss.  My mother died two years ago today,  three thousand miles away and I could not leave my husband.  The odd things that come to you sometimes.   She loved danish pastry and fig squares.  Once upon a time they were something I made trips to the bakery for as Richard and I also loved pastries.  Those days long gone for me.  But this morning I thought of my mother and decided I would find a bakery and buy 'her' a raspberry danish.  So I ventured out into the ninety plus  temperatures with the same amount of humidity searching for the right danish I had in my mind.  One of the last things she said to me via a long phone call before she became ill was she wished I was there and we could have coffee or tea with something 'good' together and just talk.  I so wished that too.  I always thought there would be time to share that with her.  It was not to be.

                                                            A Danish for Mom
                                                            oil, 8"x10" canvas panel

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...

One year...

This man...this man who I shared life with for fifty years, who I loved, was my lover, fought with, laughed with, danced with, had five children with, eight grandchildren with, and everything else with died one year ago today. I have written over the year extensively about my grief, sadness, hopelessness via Facebook and you for the most part have read and held me up...thank you. I am numb this morning. Oddly quiet and thoughtful but numb. A strange state of disbelief and calm. The tears are right at the ready. I find it hard to believe 365 days have past with out him, that I have cried for 365 days, sometimes for hours at end, curled up on the floor in the fetal position. He was my life I have discovered...there is much I have discovered about me over the year but the most important is I know  he was who I was meant to be with. That is it really...I loved him, love him now, and will continue to love him...I miss him still as much today as ever and look for ward to that day at the end of my life, with my hands outstretched to him and I see him again, and he will throw his

arms around me and I will settle once again...I had no idea.

Six Months...

                   That Morning

Searching frantically for poems, music, or words
anything to mark your death
to bring you back to me
six months ago today...half a year
and so the tears begin
a seemingly permanent condition
that takes me back to you, that morning
the unreal silence of the breath I use to listen to
the unbelievability of your stilled body that use to hold me close
no longer seeing me
hearing me
feeling me...
the loneliness for you
for us
for then
I am unable to touch the place to make it better
all I do is yearn for you
everyday remember what we did
sadness spreads as hot molten lava
burning me
hardening me
to the stone
searching for her lover
I love you, Richard

-Carol Rodi

 This was written Friday by me...as an expression of my grief.