Step Right In, Sit Right Down

This table used to sit n my Grandma's basement.  My uncle tells me it used to have five leaves!

...Baby let your mind roll on.  Remember that one?

That is what I can do, now that I have a drawing room. My studio, if you will.  Thanks to Ali for donating her room, my brother Jay for donating my Grandmothers table and Pete for refinishing the table.  Having a space to work in has turned my desire into action.  That part of my brain, sat dormant, alive only in doodles these past twenty years as I pursued a career and raised a family.

My first memory of my love of art is drawing with my mother at age three or four while my younger siblings napped.  At age five I won a coloring contest.  In second grade the nuns rolled out shelving paper so I could paint murals.  That must have been my classical period as I painted crucifictions and church scenes.   The University of Minnesota's "Young Peoples Symphony Art Program" encouraged students to paint to music.  That made an impression me as I recall feeling proud to appear in school those days with a dress instead of my uniform and to be picked up by my parents early to view my compositions on the walls of Northrup Auditorium.  My first "exhibition" was a "contemporary piece" of swirly tempra on red construction paper painted to Aaron Copland's Rodeo.  Later a water color and then a Paul Klee-esk pastel with ink.  Though being competitive is not in my nature, from second grade through my sophomore year in college I was always the best of my peers when it came to art.

In college I majored in both art and biology and found they each took all of me, so my junior year I focused on the later.   Creativity snuck out in sketch books and other forms such as quilting, weaving, knitting and an occasional painting.  Mostly though it was all in limbo, until now.

My intent when I retired eighteen months ago was to resurrect my skills.  It puzzled me why I was doing everything but.  I realize now it was like searching for a box in the back of the attic.  I just found it and am slowly unpacking it.

Since setting up my studio, I draw almost daily. I am not as rusty as I thought, but certainly only a fraction of what I hope to be.  I reflect on how crafts take eight years of apprenticeship, and I feel as though I am in year one.  In my teens and early twenties I drew one to four hours I day - I hope to rekindle those habits.

I started an art blog.  You can follow my progress at http://nancylizette.blogspot.com/.  There, now I am committed!