Not Looking Too Far Ahead– Painting Demos Continue

 

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 “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” 12×12, oil on canvas

 

A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend Peter and I I took Ezra to the Audubon Zoo. The orangutans were out and playful (on our last visit they weren’t available), but the Elephant exhibit was still under construction. Ezra seemed to get just as excited about the decorative animal statues as he did about the real animals. No elephants? No problem. There were lovely elephant statues in the fountain. He was thrilled. Peter took a few candids of Ezra and I walking, and today’s painting is based on one of them.

I’m still working on this whole painting demos video thing. I like it. I learn from it. Knowing someone is watching me paint makes me do so more thoughtfully, perhaps less distractedly. I let my coffee get cold, the phone ring (okay, on this particularly painting I did answer the phone. See if you can catch it about halfway through).

Photo on 3-12-15 at 2.55 PM
Don’t mind the tube of Boudreaux’s butt paste in the background.

About a year ago, a dear high school friend of mine, Lisa, came to visit me and Ezra. Lisa and I haven’t lived in the same city for nearly fifteen years, so we usually have a lot to catch up on. I told her about my desire to paint, and after she’d departed for Boston I found a gift and a few words of encouragement under my bed. The gift was a Dr. Seuss mug– Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

I thought it only appropriate that I use the mug not for coffee but for art. I store some of my brushes in it and use it when I do watercolors. It’s a beautiful reminder, not just about the places I have been and the places I will one day go, but about the little person I’m leading. The one to whom I get to show the world. I love holding his hand. I love being his guide.

It wasn’t too long ago, another friend sent me this text asking this question: “So…you’re out of debt, officially divorced, globe trotting for work, developing amazing things with your art, and dating a man who is wildly in love with you and your son?”

I still have a lot of places I want to go. More than I can count. But this painting has reminded me to love the the path I’m on not necessarily for where it’s headed but for where I am on it. Right now.

 

 

Picture of Denise Hopkins

Denise Hopkins

March 13, 2015

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