New baby

07 Nov New baby

Behold, my studio as she is right now.  A little corner of the kitchen.  My kids get so fed up with me leaving my painting stuff out.  They don’t say much but it’s sort of like the looks the cats give when their food bowl is empty.  You just feel it, right?  This picture was taken after I had put away my glorious giant pile of paint tubes.   I hate digging through my big bin looking for certain ones so once I find them and they’re out they tend to stay out.

There are things I like about painting in my kitchen.  I love painting in the midst of my family, there’s great light, and I can walk just a few feet to smother my painter angst moments with apples and peanut butter. (Sometimes that’s a problem.)  My kids hate tripping over the easel as they try to get to the recycling bin.  They get fed up with my stuff being all over, and the tension-filled moments when they innocently walk into the kitchen for a snack and I pounce all over them for an opinion!  And I do leave my stuff all over.  It must be superbly annoying.  I think I almost always stop painting because I have to go do something else,  not because I feel done, and who knows when I’ll get back to it.  Leaving my paints and debris out is my way of telling myself, “Be right back.  Sometime.”

But enough’s enough.  October was a nutty crazy busy month and the family home is reflecting this big time.  My painting nest now extends out into rows of backpacks and shoes and coats circling it.  I think my kitchen studio has become a vortex.  And what can I say about it?  It started with me!

Enter this little beauty.

Isn’t she gorgeous?  Not everyone’s taste I’m sure but I’m in serious smittenship.  When I drove her home yesterday — her, not it — I’d reach back at red lights and put my hand on top, on the old wood and layers of paint.  This baby has soul!  I haven’t had time to fiddle or arrange yet but she’s going to be paint central for me now.  There’s room for all of my paints, divided up into containers for different colours so less digging, and I can fit small canvases and books.  I’m moving out of the kitchen … humph … and into the living room and this yummy cupboard is going to be my partner and hold my hand and my stuff.  She’s going to talk me through when I have to stop painting, telling me it’s ok, I’ll be back, and she’ll be waiting there holding onto my stuff for me.

You can see the buckets of space I have to fit my easel in there. Sigh.  There’s a set of drums in the corner, a misstep a few Christmases ago, who are going to have to find another home.  I don’t think they know it yet.

I’m still close to the kitchen — a bit farther so maybe my apple and peanut belly will shift a little — and I used money from selling paintings to buy her, which feels nice.  So off I go.  Down the hall.