Free at last

I‘ve been an artist for as far back as I can remember. And that’s a loooong time. Yet I’m a beginner. Again.

See, I spent 41 years doing non-art jobs and was dumped out of the corporate world at age 57.

Here’s “Corporate Fury.”

I took it so gracefully I memorialized my layoff with a painting entitled “Corporate Fury,” decorated with my fingernail scrapings around the edges and some bruising of the canvas. It was beautifully cathartic.

Of course I was snapped back up by other multigazillion-dollar companies since they love love love old ladies. Yah. No. So, finally but too early, I earned my freedom.

Freedom. To do what I really want to do, what I went to college for, what I’d choose to do if I were to die in a year, what I kicked to the curb for regular paychecks, what makes time vanish, what envelops and immerses me.

Here’s the first kicker: I never took a painting class in school, not even during my five years as an art major in college. Here’s the second: I’ve misspent decades not doing “Art with a Capital A.”

Hence, beginner, again. Scary good.

Nevertheless, I’ve created some surprising stuff, some of which I even like. More pieces are in the works as is steady progress toward Advanced Beginner status. So, the bumpy ride of a new life is smoothing out some.

This adventure will last at least a year. That’s when the savings will run out. In about four years Social Security will keep me afloat—if it hasn’t been sunk by then. Money or no, I’m moving into it, somehow, some way.

Hope you’ll come with.