Stay Golden

 

“Stay Golden”, 16″ x 20″ Acrylic on Canvas

I was pretty moody and sullen as a teenager / young woman, as I imagine pretty much everyone is. How anyone manages to push past the insanity of hormonal avalanches is a wonder. I think I purposefully blanked a bunch of it out, honestly. I like to consider myself a much more balanced person these days. Whether or not that’s factual is up to contention. 😉 I do make a conscious effort to stay positive, and to see the good side of things even though it is SO much easier (and coincidentally, much more hilarious) to point out the obnoxious bad sides of everything.

My beloved Grandfather passed away earlier this year, and while I never heard him say it, Grandma says he used to call those special instances in everyday life “golden moments”. The above piece, “Stay Golden” was one of those. I was walking down the street with my friend Nick, whom I hadn’t caught up with for years, in the SOMA [South of Market] neighborhood of San Francisco. The warm sunlight of dusk illuminated this bit of probably-sanctioned graffiti professing “Knowledge is Golden”. The reference to the abstract  of “golden” in light of.. well, the ACTUAL golden light, was a “golden moment” for me. Looking at this painting reminds me of Grandpa. It reminds me to stay positive, since being a cranky bratface never helped anyone. Even though I may have LOTS of reasons to be cranky. LOTS OF THEM. 😉 I remember that Grandpa never complained, and it was one of the many things that made him a delight to be around, so why whine?

“Potrero Pavement”, 8″ x 8″ acrylic on canvas

The above piece, “Potrero Pavement” is a recent small painting capturing one of those early morning weekdays in the city when shopkeeps sweep the dust off their entrances and everything is quiet.

“Sentinel”, 8″ x 8″ acrylic on canvas

And this other little guy, “Sentinel” is from a walk around Russian Hill with my friend Jill one wonderful evening. This dry cleaner’s was quiet, stately with its own little ambience and I wanted to honor it in a painting. Alright, battery on the laptop is running out. Hope you all enjoyed this update from recent work that I thought I posted already. 😀

 

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The wrong kind of rollercoaster

It’s been one of those pull-the-sheets-up-when-the-alarm-goes-off-and-punch-yourself-in-the-face kind of months. After years of lusting after a stable gallery relationship, I finally got picked up by HANG Gallery in San Francisco. It started off with a bang- half their inventory of my work sold within weeks, I sold a piece that wasn’t even in the gallery through them and picked up a commission. Then we realized that there was a miscommunistanding about geographical boundaries, and they dropped me until I move back into the bay area full time [which is probably never, since we own a house in Sacramento]. So ends my brief foray into career validation, as quickly as it began.

I got to visit Chicago for the first time, which I was very excited about. However, it happened to be during the annual marathon. Did you know that GPS devices don’t understand special event street closures? They also don’t sound like Daniel Craig. My attempt to visit the highly-recommended (by both friends and strangers) Chicago Art Museum was thwarted by people who inexplicably enjoy running. Thankfully, I can still read a normal map, which got me to my work-destination, but only after my limited free time was eaten up by making u-turns at the painstakingly slow instruction of angry traffic cops. As a goodbye gift, Chicago took a chunk out of my knee (it’s healing up pretty quickly) and also forced me to scuff the rental car on an impossibly narrow [and insanely expensive] parking garage.

My carpal tunnel started acting up again, which I suppose is good that it’s happening now since I have no damn time to paint at the moment, which I discovered while crawling into my rental car through the passenger seat after coming out to this in the hospital parking lot:

And my husband’s birthday is coming up, but I’ll be traveling to San Francisco, Portland, and a host of other cities for my day job (I’m a recruiter for an art college), leaving me no time to honor him or attend my nephew’s birthday party at that. I just found out that my on-campus support is being promoted, which means those students I try so hard to find are probably going to slink into the ether.

On top of all that, Open Studios is coming up. Which I have virtually no time to prepare for. Thankfully I am an expert in pulling things off with no prep time.  So if you find yourself in San Francisco November 2-3, please come visit me at SHARED 739 Bryant St in SOMA. There’s plenty of street parking, we’re having an opening reception on Friday, November 1^st  from 7 to 9 pm, and I will have my own original art for viewing and sale. I have one of those nifty SQUARE thingies so I will be accepting ALL credit cards! You too, Discover renegades. 😉 Hope to see you there. Also hoping October ends soon. When one door closes, a window opens, right? RIGHT?!