Hiatus Breaker

Created in 2004, this is the first painting I did after leaving school and going through a dry hiatus of long months when I did little to no art whatsoever. No painting, some sketches, I don't remember too clearly. I do remember very well that day when I pulled out my materials, found a blank piece of illustration board, and scraped together a setup by the only good window in our small apartment, and tried to paint again. It was frustrating and exhilarating all at once. Frustrating, because I was rusty after having not worked in so long. I fretted over mixing colors, and got impatient with myself at not being able to execute what I saw in my mind, so easily as I once had. Not to mention the lighting was poor, my makeshift easel kept wobbling, and I worried about dripping paint on the carpet. Exhilarating though, to be actually creating again!

The most lovely thing was the smell of gouache paint. It has a very particular odor, almost sweet to me. It brings back floods of memories of art school days, because that is the first place I used this medium (and haven't much since). I used to play one cd over and over while working on a painting for school, and the music would become imbedded in my head with the memory of doing that particular piece. In this case, it was George Winston's Autumn album. Now playing the same music again, with the same gouache odor and brushes in my hands, it was like living in a double exposure, the sense of reliving that other time was so strong.

By the time the day was done, I was tickled pink with myself at having painted this. It was quite crushing when my husband came home and looked at it very critically. He seemed to think it was pretty poor execution, being rather rough, not crisp, clean lines and colors as in some of my other works. I heard him out and looked at it again and realized he was probably right, it wasn't too well painted. But that did nothing to dampen my glee at painting again. I didn't care so much that it didn't look that great, I was thrilled just to have done it!

That day started out like any other day, but I had made it into something entirely different and new because now there existed this picture that had no idea of itself before. I painted again, and here it is!

I think of it as Dolphins Ring the World.