Up early this morning.  With baby neatly tucked next to Kevin in bed I was able to sneak into my studio.

I went down the basement and brought up an old painting I had made in college, it got damaged in our sometimes wet cellar and I thought I would paint over it.  After taking a look at it though, I found it in too bad shape for mere painting over.  New plan:  take it off the frame and buy a bit of canvas to re-wrap the stretchers.  It is a nude painting.  The woman was plump and round and I remember when I brought it home from school during summer break my mom thought it looked like her.  She got a kick out of it, she had a nude painting of herself that she didn’t actually have to drop a stitch of clothing for.

I am always battling that urge to keep “things”/ memories in tangible forms.  The painting was in the basement where it wasn’t being looked at anyway. My mom, though not on this earth anymore is truly such a part of me that I don’t even have to conjure up memories to be close to her;  I hear her in my voice,  she echos in me when I laugh.  So I took the painting off the stretcher staple by staple and then cut it up, deciding at different stages of destruction what parts I might keep.

In the end I have only a small part, the rest is going out to the trash.  I may just strip even that part down to bookmarks for the boys (or pausers as they like to call them).

I like to repurpose, sell, or give away, my “things”.  I find it cathartic this push against my desire to store up “treasures” in objects of this earth.  It is refreshing to be left with that blank canvas I get to paint something new on.

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Ok, the baby is calling…  So nice to finally post here again though.

~Lisa