I'm packing up my garage for construction work, and keep coming across drawings and paintings from my past. It's a mix of experiments (successful and not!), abstracts, patterns, and representational (softly realistic) paintings, including studies for larger paintings.
Some of them are kind of interesting. It makes me wonder if what I could have achieved with practice. Practice is something I didn't get: a year or two after I made the little studies in this image, I worked more than full time (>40 hours per week) in a law firm AND went to college full time on weekends (full semester case loads, full days of classes on alternating weekends, homework whenever I could). For years, I focused on my duties, rather than my pleasures.
Then I became part of a long-term couple, and that also required time. (We don't think about relationships that way, but they really are an investment, and they DO require time, attention, and energy.)
When I did finally get a solid period of time off, I decided I had to pick ONE pleasure to study in depth, and chose photography. I have no regrets about that: I learned so much! Photography has brought me great joy, great new friends, gallery shows, and adventure, and I am studying it still.
It just intrigues me to be reminded of all I want to learn in watercolor painting (which I only do now and then during vacations), and wonder when (and perhaps if) I'll be able to get some practice in and make the sorts of images I daydream about.
