A few years ago I
took a class in pen and ink from Doug Eckheart in Decorah, Iowa. He showed us how to
draw a landscape (on location) lightly with pencil, and then return to the
studio to make light marks with a quill pen dipped in black ink. We added color
with watercolor paints, then finished the drawing with more quill pen marks.
I made some bad drawings
that day, but I feel like this one sort of accidentally worked and somehow represents
my first official serious effort toward The Sally Project. The drawing made me
happy and gave me the fuel I needed for continuing my learning curve in art.
There were eight or ten women around the table, all of us
in our forties, fifties, or sixties. As we worked, he quietly said, “Many of
you here are just turning to art because you’ve been busy with kids and
careers. I can’t help but wonder: What kind of art you might have created
during all those year if you had had the time?”
I wondered that,
too. It felt so late to try to get started as an artist. I wished I would have
been more intentional about creating art even during my busy times. But I also
recognized that Sally’s exuberance may have had everything to do with starting something
so totally new in her later life.
Maybe the timing
was – is – just right.
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