TODAY IS ART DAY

Today is the happiest day of the week. Today I get to paint and play around with ideas and draw a little bit (I can't really draw), and I get to put people in monkey suits and change the shapes of their bodies. Today I get to fall in love with everyone I paint, because creating even shoddy art means falling in love with your subject. The above picture shows me falling in love with myself. Just a moment, please, while I hug myself. Mmmmmmmmm. Thank you, Deepak Chopra.

I love art day, because I get to go to Marian's class and laugh with Irwin and Judy and Rosemary and Leonard and Kathryn and Shep and Louise. It's the safest place in the world. No one is questioned, no one hears that their work is crappy. No one goes home feeling sorry for themselves, because we're all OK. Even if we aren't OK on other days.

So this morning I got up at 7, pitch dark, it could be 3, but that would be OK too, because I wake up thinking about a picture I'm going to do for someone for Christmas, but I can't say any more about it, because then he'd know. And I paint and paint. Not looking too bad. Too many strong green lines in the face, but I can blur them out. And he's just such a cute guy. Oops. Can't let out the secret.

And then I printed the big picture of myself above, which I've had for a long time. 17 x 25 inches. and I taped it on the wall, so that I can look at it even when I'm writing or painting. Just a spoonful of narcissism. It was a fairly early experiment, but if you wait to do something until it's perfect, you'll never finish. So I printed that and painted on this picture I'm giving for Christmas.

I didn't know this for so many years of my life. I didn't know that lines, and shapes, and color, and faces and hands and feet and other parts make me so happy.

Anyway, as I was saying, today is a happy day. Oh, and my friend B. doesn't have cancer, and that makes this day ever so much better.

And here's a picture of Marian, my art teacher, and me on a warm summer's day. Wouldn't take that picture today, because it's too damn cold outside. But inside, deep inside me, it's toasty warm. Because Today is Art Day.