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One morning, several years before painting this, I was hiking up the hill when the thought arose out of the blue that I need to paint that picture of myself - the one when I was almost 35, laying on the wall at my mother’s cousin Jacinta’s place in Croatia.
No one in my family remembers who took the photo and I don’t remember laying down on the wall – sort of a strange thing to do at the house of a relative who I’d just met. But there it was. I saw how the light made the skin on my left arm glow and I thought that young woman had no idea how lovely that body of hers was. None. So, to honor that body and her, I needed to paint it.
It was a wonder-full experience. I watched myself performing the craft of working with the colors in my brushes to make the shapes and contours of my clothes and my body parts, woven through the realization that this was me. My ankle, my toes, my nose, my eyebrow.
I’m happy that I’m happy with how it came out – there are no guarantees with art. It was fun to paint jean shorts – I never had the occasion to do that before! Looking at the finished painting I can feel, viscerally feel, that body. It’s more light and lithe than the one I’m in now. (It was more than 20 years ago!) It really is lovely. I have made myself real to myself in a way I’ve not before experienced.
I’m amazed at the good fortune to have had this photo reference – of my younger self, at the end of living six months in Paris, on the island of my grandparents’ birth, having come through my divorce, relaxed and at peace.
Having the ability to paint in order to create this piece of art to honor myself - I’ve never felt more grateful to have become an artist.
October 2018 - 22"x30" - Watercolor on paper
