Liquidated, 2009; watercolor on paper, approximately 16 x 25 inches.
Well that took a bit longer than expected.
Liquidated is the second in my 99W Series of paintings. This is a planned sequence of images using the thread of old Pacific Highway West through Western Oregon as a common theme. The road forms a cross section of the western portion of the state, stretching from urban Portland through to the rural prairies of the Willamette Valley. This latest painting follows the earlier Morning Rush, Portland….
…Earlier by two years.
It is really amusing because Morning Rush, Portland I completed in January 2007, and immediately afterwards began Liquidated. My academic activities, however, quickly took over my time and attention. For the longest time, the painting sat clipped to an oversized Masonite clipboard, 2/3rds done. Every time I looked at it, I felt guilt, as if it were an abandoned child. There was never enough time. There was never enough motivation. Always my calendar had something else to do, some other thing that needed my attention. If the painting had been a garden it would have been growing dandelions.
Now that the 2008-2009 academic year has wound down, I’ve been playing catch up. There’s been lots of cleaning, straightening, book sorting — scarily enough there are over forty books I have collected over the year that have yet to be read — and all manner of other reprioritization that is now possible with the additional time on my hands. One of the activities that immediately rose to the top of the to-do list: complete Liquidated.
Monday saw me heading downtown on WES to supplement my disintegrating brush collection. Tuesday morning saw me cleaning out the paintbox, the old dried up palettes, the caked and dead tubes of paint. Tuesday night saw me marathoning until 1:30 in the morning, the smell of wet cotton paper in the air and my fingers stained with viridian green and Prussian blue.
Creating — be it writing, photography, or watercolors — is a vital part of me, but somewhere along the way of the last four years, I lost that. I came, somehow, to the conclusion that I had to set that part of me aside to get more important things done. The reality is, however, that that act of creating was what was important all along. The ground is familiar now, and it feels good.
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