The Misty Patch Notekeeper
Hello. My name is Liz. I studied art education in the dark ages when the world was steeped in the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, etc. etc. As education majors, we were instructed in the rudiments of a broad range of arts and crafts so we could present the basics of virtually any artistic field to our future students. We acquired skill in things like pottery, graphics, stagecraft, silvercraft, and many more. As I recall, I had two semesters of fine art painting which, I knew, hardly qualified me for anything more than wannabe artist.
I spent the next 40 years or so doing what women of that generation did: marriage, motherhood, divorce, work and so on well into my sixties. When I could, I dabbled in paint and paper craft. Then I retired and decided I would see how far I could go with a commitment to develop my skill in these media. Having little confidence in my ability as a painter, I settled on finding out what I could do with paper. It didn't take long for me to realize the answer to that question was-- not much. And when I became aware of the works of real paper artists such as these at https://mymodernmet.com/stunning-paper-art/ I just gave up the whole idea. Besides I was way more interested in image-making as an art of cultivation rather than engineering.
I have never been good at engineering my life much less my art and none of the grand designs of my youth ever panned out. You know--the handsome husband, the stellar kids, the brilliant career, the house, the social life. None of it came true the way I wanted it to so I learned to cultivate what I had.
Eventually I found myself surrounded by an untidy garden of scattered beauties that was lovely in spite of my many ineptitudes. Not what I had dreamed of, but nevertheless pretty good. It wasn't engineered. It wasn't architecture. It was an unruly backyard populated with all kinds of living things that had blown in on the wind and taken root. Some of the things that turned up I tended because I liked them. Others thrived on neglect sending roots deep into the substance of my life practically before I noticed they were there.
My development as a painter and my present style, I think, reflect my way of living. There usually is some semblance of initial intention and, from there, it's all about cultivating whatever turns up that's good.
And ignoring what’s not.