Sunday, October 1, 2017

Maybe the Timing Is Just Right

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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