Among Artists Again

Yesterday I attended the local arts group. It has been two years since I have been around other artists. That's since my daughter was born and I left art school. Granted, I discuss art a lot with my husband, and he is becoming an invaluable critic. But he's not an artist himself, and sometimes it seems like I'm speaking a foreign language.

It was all another world yesterday in that small schoolroom in the community center. When I arrived the meeting was already in session and I pulled up a chair to the fringes, sat very still and plunged my ears into the discussion about galleries, shows, displays and hangings, local fairs, materials, demonstrations, framing, the words went around and around. I basked in the glow of their words, finally centered in the world of art I feel I have been living solitary all this time. Once there was mention made of a large art supplier, Daniel Smith. Having grown up in Seattle, this name was very familiar to me. I've frequented their store in downtown Seattle many times. Nobody here had ever heard of them, there were shrugs all around the table, but to me it felt like a thread reaching back across the country to my life that was there.

Numerous people asked me what medium I work in. I repeated my phrase "pastels, sometimes oils" many times. Once I added that occasionally I use acrylics, and another artist launched into a monolouge about how wonderful and diverse acrylics are. "I'm not very proficient in them yet," I admitted, since I really have rarely used them since school days. "I'm still learning."

"We are all learning. I am still learning," said an senior woman near me with skin wrinkled like fine handmade paper. Her eyes glowed with kindness and interest, and I wondered what works come alive under her hands.

Another replied that it doesn't matter how long you've used a medium "as long as you have good composition and values." That any material, with a little practice, can be used by an artist who can draw well. It's not in the medium, it's in you. I blinked in surprise, and pleasure. The words were simple, probably ones I have heard many times before, but they seemed full of extra meaning and life to me.

Perhaps my thrill at being with other artists will make more sense to you if you read what I wrote a year ago when I lived in California. I think I'll post that tomorrow....