A Sustaining Activity

This is the painting I mentioned in my previous post. Why make them wait to see it, I asked myself. So here it is. To me the piece looks like a finger-painting a kindergartener might have made, but I was 44, and I applied tempera paint with a brush. Naive though it is, the hallmarks of my work to this day are revealed in this scribble: bright colors and bold lines. In Dances in Two Worlds, I describe the circumstances of my upbringing that primed me to paint. And I write about the forces that inhibited me from doing so. Significantly, two generations of women behind me—my mother and my grandmother—had communicated "the validity of creative self-expression as a sideline but never as a sustaining activity." When I finally did give myself permission to paint...those vibrant colors and the dynamic lines! I sometimes think there is only one explanation—three generations of women are making themselves heard with every brushstroke I make.