I Fell Up the Stairs.

A note from the studio — and the stairs

I have a confession to make.

There is a video of me escorting a box of paintings down a flight of stairs.

Not carrying it. *Escorting* it — one careful, sliding step at a time — because the box weighs more than three pounds, and three pounds is currently the full weight of what my left wrist is allowed to hold.

It is pure comedy. And a perfect description of where I am right now.

The Ambush

A fall going up the stairs is not the literary choice. Nor is it the stunt person’s choice. There is so much more drama in tumbling down the stairs. Up the stairs, not so much.  But fall UP the stairs, I did.

The brace is not a gentle inconvenience. It was an ambush — the kind that reveals itself in every corner of your life until you realize there is almost nothing you do that does not involve the thing you are no longer allowed to do.

A fractured left wrist sounds quite manageable. Except that I am ambidextrous, and I use my left hand for nearly everything. In fact, I have become lazy lately and thought I was dominate Right. With every minute in the brace, I am correcting that perception.

So, the brace is not a gentle inconvenience. It was an ambush — the kind that reveals itself in every corner of your life until you realize there is almost nothing you do that does not involve the thing you are no longer allowed to do.

In the studio, my left hand holds the palette. Always has. With the brace, I can hold three colors. Three. The rest of the palette sits on the table like a beautiful, untouchable library. Oh, with some old socks and scissors, I think I can keep the brace presentable. I think. Fingers Crossed. Nope, can’t do that.

Sharpening an oil pastel, a thing that should take seconds, is now a small engineering project. And the varnishing: ten paintings are waiting for their first coat, the PNW dry-air season is short, and carrying even a single canvas down the stairs is over the weight limit. Hence the escorting. Hence the video. 

What Slow Art Looks Like Now

I have always made slow art. Oil pastel builds in layers, asks you to wait and look and come back. Like the garden, it does not care about your schedule. But this is a different kind of slow: the slow of solving small problems before you can get to painting. Of resting between steps that never needed rest before.

Welcome to Slower Art

When you can only reach for three colors, you choose carefully. When every mark costs something, you make fewer — and sometimes fewer is exactly right.

Paintings are still being made. With three colors instead of fifteen. With more stops. And I find, not entirely to my surprise, that the constraint is doing something interesting. When you can only reach for three colors, you choose carefully. When every mark costs something, you make fewer — and sometimes fewer is exactly right.

The box and I made it down the stairs. We will do it, or something like it, again.
New work is coming — slowly, carefully, with the same attention it always has. If you have been waiting on a print, thank you. Genuinely.

And if you want to see the escorting video: stay tuned. It deserves an audience.

Fine Art Prints available now.

 — Cynthia