Cuppa Tea

On my third cup of tea now and struggling a little with the pain as I sit here. I’m not sure, but I think a few minutes in the recliner will help. Isn’t that a shame? 69 years old and I’m using a recliner more often than ever. I’m disgusting. But…did I mention that I recently sold an art piece? That makes me an artist – officially! One of the gourds that I had displayed at the Plant Barn finally sold. And Denise says that there is a ‘looker’ at another one of my pieces. If I sold two, there would be no doubt as to my second career; I’m an artist! I can’t make a living from it, but it is fun. And rewarding.Alas, I can’t do any gourd art right now because of the ‘standing and sitting’ issue in a cold garage studio and so I have moved inside with my acrylics and watercolors. I now have a cramped little studio in our family room, close to the woodstove, and that’s a bonus, plus I can get up and move around every five or ten minutes and that works out fine as I need to let things dry. Acrylic dries fast and after a brief time away for pain relief I can get right back to my work. Right now I’m painting on everything; I’m using 140# CP watercolor paper, Masonite, canvas, Yupo and 300# CP illustration board. Since the ‘studio’ consists of a round dining room table with no leaves in it, I’m forced into the smaller sizes for my work. But that’s good. I’m always tempted to do art on a grand scale and these tiny surfaces make you think a lot about the details. There was a sale the other day on 8”x10” canvas frames, 10 of them for $15 and I grabbed them. There’s a project waiting to happen! And then I received some art materials from Cheap Joe’s and ended up with a problem; I had ordered 5 pieces of illustration board and they had sent me 25 and they all have a ‘ding’ and a wrinkle on one corner where the box was dropped. Anyway, Cheap Joe’s was notified and now I wait for an answer. I’m not in a hurry as the illustration board is 22”x30” and overwhelms my workspace. I’ll be glad when the surgery and recuperation are over with and I can get back to my real studio.
The pain I’m dealing with was aggravated the other day when I went out to the garden to harvest this year’s gourd crop which will become art projects this summer. After ten minutes of harvesting I was done! But it was almost worth it as it was a sunny day and I hadn’t been outside in the garden for such a long time! I can hardly wait for summer.