“In Passings”
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
July 2020
I’ve been surprised, if not entirely taken aback, by the eight or ten messages I’ve had, since finishing this painting about a week ago. Everyone keeps asking a version of “Tell me more ABOUT it”…..which I find odd, since I distinctly wrote “This is how I feel today”. I don’t know how much clearer (or, just perhaps, intentionally evasive) a painter can be. I just got another such message and thought to post this. I finished the painting after a long morning spent, sitting, once again, on a bench outside the enormous, fairly forbidding UVA Cancer Center…..the third time I’ve done this in recent months….while a friend went in for treatment/news/whatever. All I (and I am ridiculously healthy amidst all this trouble and worry and pain) could do was to watch all of those sick and caring folks.. I also have to say that I’ve sat there, watching those folks (200 or so of them at least?) being dropped off, being processed through the new COVID, outside receiving-units……and I’ve been gratefully struck, each time (and I sit outside for some hours, waiting for my friend to emerge) at how utterly kind and patient everyone is with each other…..staff and patients. And then I drive 26 miles back here….to this calm, isolated place, where the only bad news comes over the radio. I came back from the last trip to the Cancer Center, sat on the back porch with the dogs, watched the clouds and fog lift over the mountains that surround us here in this little valley, and thought (as I’ve often done since I was first taught it when I was very young) of this song. SO?…..that’s what this painting is “About”. Go to: https://www.youtube.com/
