It has been so long since I posted anything…here goes with art. I’ve been painting more than I’ve been writing, and lately I’ve been painting landscapes adorned by fine black lines that make me feel like I’ve been writing. I’m going to share a few here, to memorialize what I’ve been up to. Many are based on a trip we took to the American Southwest–Ian, Erik, Chad, and me–in August 2016, the summer before Chad died. It was a special time even as we lived it, made even more so by memory and loss and longing. I hope you like my paintings. They are somehow a way of telling a story that connects me to my son and a time that will not come again.
We spent a day at a park called Slide Rock, where we rode down a chute through a canyon.
I jumped in the Colorado River when we went rafting in Moab, but then could not pull myself back into the raft. Chad grabbed me by my lifevest and hoisted me back in–not once, but twice, for I do not learn from my mistakes. And it was a hot day.
We sought shelter in the shadows of rocks from the heat and the sun. I imagine them now as bright colors and easy places, but they were hard hikes and hot days. Memory transforms everything, doesn’t it?
