I was staring at a painting in my studio, hung with six push pins. I hung the paper up today, painted it and collaged it. It’s a large piece of thick water color paper, 50” x 48”. I started it and finished in one day, which is impractical. It’s delicate paper, it’s large, where will I store it? If only I had another show lined up or someone to buy it? I need to start working smaller. I love working big, but I need to work small. I went on a walk today, up the trail, past blue bells and hedge parsley. Past the decaying tree stumps, getting smaller than they were last year. So many kinds of little green plants, clovers, grasses, dead leaves on the ground in ruby red and dark brown. The air was cold, my hands freezing. The sun was out, the sky so clear, I thought it would be warmer. It was my last day of having three-year-old children. My last day I could get away with calling them babies. I love Jack and Fiona so much, they have turned out to be good kids. It’s hard to believe when I reminisce of the past, of Jack and Fiona as infants, of life before they were born, my mind is filled now with beautiful memories. The sad memories of my most difficult times have diffused, leaving a stain, but not a strong stab to my heart. I have healed in the past four years. I have a collection of paintings that document feelings I’ve gone through. Lines and color, paper and canvas, lots of the work framed. My studio needs to be cleaned, to make space for my new collection, my new work, from the new me. Or the same me? The original, more confident, less broken me? I don’t know. I just know that this year I have changed.
Category: family life
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Lights on, don’t know what time it is. “I peed my bed” says Jack. For a minute I suggest he sleeps in our bed for the rest of the night. We both think thats a bad idea. I get up, take off the peed sheets, blankets, and pillow, remake his bed and go back to sleep. Sore throat keeps me in bed longer than usual. I hear laughing and screaming, it sounds like it’s coming from outside. Pry myself from under the covers. What are they doing? Go upstairs, cold air rushing in, patio covered in white. Jack and Fiona naked, freezing. Alan yells, how bad what they’ve done is. The whole carton of new milk empty, splattered all over, whip cream container, six yogurt drinks all empty. Take Fiona and Jack in, put them in a warm bath. “I put milk on my body, mommy, we poured it on our whole bodies, our butts, my penis” Jack says. “On my butt and on my vagina” Fiona says. “Will Daddy still be mad?” Fiona asks. “What you did was very bad” I say. I dress them and we go upstairs and have breakfast. We might need to put a lock on the fridge. Alan says we don’t need to have candy in the house, they don’t need it to survive and they do this sorta shit when they’re spoiled. It all started with a game, Pie Face they got for Christmas. I may have put the idea in their head yesterday about a food fight. We were talking about pie face and I said I was going to get them each a can of whip cream and they could have a whip cream fight. They loved the idea. I think its my fault they got into the fridge this morning and had a food fight.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 