Solid

I found myself asking myself all week if it was Wednesday yet, and now here I am on Thursday wishing it were Wednesday again. This week has been very rough with my son not wanting to sleep in his bed. Somehow, he has found his way into ours- and quite frankly this nonsense has to stop. No matter how much we love him, I'm extremely uncomfortable at 27 weeks pregnant, my husband is 6' 4", we don't all fit in a queen size bed, and we just can't do this anymore. Alex was left to deal with the bed time rituals, then the throw down, followed by the screaming which has turned routine at this point.

Throughout the course of the week, I think I have settled on something solid for my small pieces. I am simply doing studies of aloe plants in a representational manner, half drawn, half painted atop a solid but wash like background of a particular color field. The pieces will have part or parts of the wood panel coming through, but to be honest, the pieces are nothing like I envisioned them- they definitely developed on their own, so to speak. The background of the pieces will have a dominant background color, and the intention is that when these small pieces are viewed together the colors of each piece will look harmonious as a whole.

I am thinking that there should be four background colors, and I have started with a red, a blue, and a violet. I worked to create some backgrounds, and did one study of one aloe during our time, feeling that in the end more needed to be added to the study. Nicole and I talked about a price point and what was selling. It sounds ridiculous, but small pieces for $95.00 are being sold at Chesterfield Arts. I asked Nicole- "Why don't I just put a price tag on them for $99.99?" She said that this is what is selling, and that people are buying multiples at this price point. The bottom line is that they really need to be quick but well done renderings that could possibly sell for a lower price, rather than the large pieces that I work months on that are intended to sell in the thousand dollar range.

Nonetheless, I felt happy working. I felt calm. My mind was centered and I was glad that I abandoned the smaller pieces with many different elements swishing about them in every which way. The aloe pieces were much more authentic to me. Now, the hard part is doing many, many more of them, and framing them, while concurrently trying to finish the large piece with the figures of all three girls. ('Wallpaper')

Nicole remained frustrated and felt she was in a bad spot, never getting anywhere. I explained to her that I wasn't exactly zipping along. As mothers we have so many other obligations and pots to stir. She is working on a large piece with hands and string, and decided last night that firstly, the hands were photographed in the wrong position and then secondly, when the execution of the hands on the board took place, she decided that one of the hands looked: a. like the 'Awakening' and b. was too centered. Still I feel that so many times it takes execution to realize that something is amiss- and in finding what we do not want, we are closer to finding what we do want.

I left groggy and so tired late at night, and could barely keep my eyes open for the ride home. I came home thankfully to a quiet house to find my son and husband both asleep on the floor of my sons room on the air mattress. It was sweet, however, this too is a situation that cannot last for much longer.