Solitary Rose

Solitary Rose is a 30x40 oil on board. I just put it up here because it seemed to have some relevance to my blog today. I painted it in 2006. It still sits somewhere deep in that hovel I call my studio.








I just couldn't go into the studio today. It just wasn't in my heart. So I piddled around this morning checking email, gave myself a manicure, wandered outside into this beautiful early fall weather and thought, what's to stop me from transplanting a few day lilies. Within a half hour I had completely destroyed my manicure, dug up and divided clumps and clumps of day lilies, planted them in a curved border all along the front of the house in front of the azalea hedge, pulled up clumps of iris', which were practically above ground anyway, and with shovel in hand, dug around my gardens throughout the yard and put those tubers which survived my clumsy efforts into their new homes.

Within minutes of kneeling down and planting my first day lily however, I thought, how nice to get away from art for a while, and immediately realized again how very fortunate we artists are. How fortunate I am to spend my life creating beauty (or at least striving to), and how fortunate I am to work so hard at it, that I have to find time to get away from it. Art is truly a gift, one that I acknowledged at a very early age. Through a lifetime of feeling inadequate, I have always been humbled by this gift, this responsibility also, that affirmed.

And as if this wonderful moment of awareness wasn't enough, as I finished up the new day lily bed I noticed one gardenia in bloom, all alone in my enormous gardenia bush. I leaned over to get a deep whiff, and was immediately transferred in time to our home in Clearwater, Florida. I was 12, we had gardenias, and my mother was alive. And her face, her presence, became momentarily vivid.

Another gift. Thank you, God.