A New Start

With a second marriage, to someone named Art (!), and a relocation from B.C. to Ontario, I spent some time adjusting to my new life. Painting seemed a luxury I could not afford as I struggled to fit into a stressful career to which I was unsuited. When the opportunity to paint finally came, I threw myself into it. I bought materials and a drafting table, and read books and painted. I began once again to see myself as an artist. I started with heritage homes, and painted two. I made mistakes, and I learned, and I grew. The third one, the best, was only a sketch when we moved to a new location. Somehow with the move, I lost my focus and the sketch sat unpainted for two more years. Perhaps I paint to get in touch with myself, the way some people journal. I don't really know. But for whatever reason, one day I discovered the sketch, still on the drafting table in the attic, and now covered in dust, and I recalled the work I had put into it. I wondered if it could be salvaged. It was of a home from a picture I took one spring day in Niagara-On-The-Lake. The billow of the pre-confederation Union Jack flag simply had to be painted. And so I found my paints and brushes and finished what I had started.......Eventually, as the kids left the nest, I gained a studio. I put this painting on the wall of that studio as an encouragement. If something had me down, or I doubted myself, I would go to my studio and look at that painting. It somehow gave me confidence.