Dear Friend,

I got all wigged out about my painting. I really hated seeing it in that art museum-owned gallery. It is lost on the wall amongst all those other bad works of art. It's hanging between two cheesy paintings of birches and above a ceramic plaque of a friendly bear peeping out from between two trees. It looks like an art booth at a flea market. All the glow and color play is lost. It is amazing how deeply off balance I can still get about art. I'm pulling myself back together though. I'm also thanking the stars that I didn't get into grad school for art all those years ago. I'd be a complete nut by now if I were trying to make a living in the art world.

T was no help. He tried, but he didn't know how to reassure me that it is worthwhile to make art, even when it fails to come across in a show. A friend helped, saying things you would have said about how my secret magical side comes out in my paintings. I know that it is not coming across full strength in my art yet. I know that it would take years of painting steadily to get to the point where it did come across. I don't know if I will ever have the time, energy, and will to allow that growth to happen. I hope I will. I think I will have failed at life somehow if I don't. I also think I need to get stronger in order to do it. Instead I feel like I am getting weaker.

When I took Little Miss to the big theater on the college campus for her dress rehearsal yesterday I was led into a practice theater. It was a lot like the little practice theater at AC. Did you ever go in there? It was a high-ceiling room painted all in black with stage lights trained on the center of the space. D and I used to take a boom box and dance in the one at AC. When I was little I had an absolutely amazing art teacher who held classes in a space like that under the main stage at a little theater in Dallas. Suddenly walking into that kind of space yesterday awakened my creativity in a very immediate and powerful way. It was strange. I suddenly wanted to dance and draw and paint big paintings on the floor. I wish I could have a studio like that. It felt like going into my own head or heart, like an infinitely large space inside a small building, absolutely private and safe. I may have to look into renting or borrowing such a space from time to time. I don't think I can turn my bedroom studio into a space like that. With the big windows facing the bay, it is really the opposite kind of space. Sure, I could paint the walls black and hang velvet blackout curtains over the windows, but that would be all wrong.

I am looking forward to our road trip Monday. I am just taking my oil pastels, but I plan to get some good connection to nature and art in between all the driving and camp making work.

Am I insane?

Love,
R