Time to Paint

The other night at dinner I was sneezing and sniffling, and I made an offhand comment like,"I hope I am not getting sick.  That's the last thing that I need right now."  This week was the week before finals, the most grueling week of the semester.  This year it has been mixed with an art exhibit for teachers, an art competition for my students, along with the normal end-of-term public school drama and a flurry of holiday activities. My sister-in-law was with us, and she suggested a medicine that would nip a cold in the bud if taken as soon as symptoms started to show.  My wife looked at me unsympathetically and said flatly, "he doesn't need medicine.  He just needs to paint."  As the mother of four kids, my wife is great at feeling out fevers, assessing digestive issues, and layering medicines to cover any number of maladies.  But my wife has also become an expert at my psychosis.  She knows that when I do not spend a certain number of hours per week in my studio, that I "get a certain way." Here are the symptoms:

• Clumsiness.  This is always an issue, but I manage to loose any portion of grace that I posses.  Plus, I also spontaneously invent swearing phrases that are embarrassing and do not make sense, like "Shit cakes!", or "Frick-riken!" This reminds me of my dad ("Dag-nabbit!")
• Irritability.  Like, to the point that I am scolding inanimate objects for not cooperating with some every day task, or saying things like, "why does gravity always have to work against me!"
• Distractabilty.  The details of things seem to evade me.  Also, I start to care less about putting small pieces together.  This is a surefire way to create hell in a high school classroom.  "Sure, you can go work out in the hallway with your friends.  Whatever."
• Self-centeredness.  Like talking back to the radio when Robert Siegel is interviewing a politician with an annoying point of view.  Like becoming very possessive of every minute of alone time.    Like paying  attention to every sneeze or sniffle.

This is the paradox of the art studio- if I spend a couple of hours per day steeped in my own mental space, caring only about those things that only I care about, I become so much more empathetic toward others.  If I zone out, wearing my ipod, and listen to loud, vulgar music like the Pixies, I am transformed into a calm and more lucid speaker.  If I hyper-concentrate on small, isolated tasks such as masking off a complicated shape or making just the right unpracticed-looking brushstroke, I can dance through a complicated day.  And even if  I am facing a very busy schedule, spending a couple of hours in my studio always means that I will get more school work, house work and relationship building done than if I gave those hours to more tasks. 

Isn't that a shit cake?

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com