A PICTURE FOR LETITIA

LETITIA

This is the painting which was sent to Canada as part of the International Women Celebrate exhibition where women around the world participated in raising funds for the Haiti disaster. I called it Letitia.

This painting was a very emotive exercise for me, starting it while with a dying friend, during her last week of therapy.

Even looking at it now, I feel the tears well up in my eyes, remembering our long and deep conversations, how she lay on the couch with tubes coming out her nose, quietly watching me work and giggling softly at my frustrations. After only a year, we formed a strong and strange bond where her circumstances called for complete trust in me and my absolute devotion to her.

Occasionally I still feel her presence, especially now that I am busy on a family portrait.

There are things added to the painting however which make me smile. Wanting to include everything which my senses were experiencing at the time, I painted it in. Eg, looking carefully, you will see that the toe of the naked,curled up figure in the centre, its abnormally large. A dear friend cracked her toe against something and said that it was big and swollen....well, I happened to be painting the feet at the time, so I added the mental image!

The figure of Jesus was part of a dream. I had three small incomplete pictures of the face of Jesus which I'd started a while back. Now one of them had shot through the canvas!!

I felt compelled to paint it although it had obviously not been part of the initial genre (of women being compared to flowers, tender, bendable, beautiful, vulnerable).

The result; ( for me anyway)...., was a very disjointed picture,..... but a picture that evoked applause and tears in Canada. The owner of the gallery hung it in her bedroom till the opening and apparently it was one of the first to be sold. What better compliment is there than that?! Mission accomplished, for me and for a very special friend. She knew it was being dedicated to her so I know she's smiling.

The lesson in that was that Jesus is always behind us in whatever we do, BUT HE WANTS TO BE PART OF THE PICTURE...TRUST HIM.

Dealing with Hurts

The Lie of Love
And so this strange journey continues, a stony road of rebuff
Lined with distorting mirrors which turn smiles into scowls
I hold aloof my heart lest it, once again, be scorned and rejected
As wicked Misinterpretation has again seen another countenance

I know guilt and cruelty created the box where rationality is hidden
Here where the fuddled groping of hurt can be shut out
The key is hidden in a tight fist of pains' deafness and denial
Blessed release rebuffed for the thin blanket of comforting darkness.

Empty, injured eyes look daily, unseeing, into the face of unconditional love
Unconciously reaching out but conciously fearing the nakedness of trust
Love is naught but the bringer of despair and terror-ridden memory
A haunting, disturbed lie which substitutes faith with creedless scorn.

So on and on, drowsily treading this path with a hand holding my own
The Great Consoler leads with benevolence and cooing whispers
Shattering the images of the deciever , the shards reflecting the soul
My own and that of a kindred spririts, all, on a restorative search.

I've left this in my blog as a draught for a while as it was a very personal, emotive piece which I wrote while trying to cope with a hurt. When reading it, I discovered that it wasnt so much about the content but rather the process of confronting, understanding and taking the time to search for answers, process them and then walk away from the cause and not (never)the source.

Love is the essence of all human life, it feeds , its needed for life almost as much as its needed to be given away. We were all created in it and through it....I'm not speaking of primal human love, or the love of parents (which is sometimes sadly absent in creating another life) but the love of God.

I am often almost drowned by the intensity of my own feelings, a whole range of them, and need to separate myself from myself sometimes, in order to deal with them... go outside to see in, if that makes sence.

Beginnings

Some of my first dodgy pieces:

My first painting ever, flowers. Doing this got me hooked.

I'm always facinated that as parents, nomatter how 'not great' something is that our children make, we will keep it. I'm exactly the same I guess!! Its about the 'creator' and not the 'creation'.

My first lion..eish!!! (no further comment is nessesary!)

My first lamp..made in clay, about 18 years ago.

A BOX FOR MOM

This is what I made for my mom....hmmmmm, not wild about it but she loved it

I carved out the panels, techniqued the box with black and silver fabric paint, made a little pewter 'flower', got some red Shirovski crystal beads for the carved flower centres, some Hirkimer diamonds for round the centre of the pewter flower and a piece of red coral for the centre of the pewter flower.

The reason for my choice of colours were, red...my mom loves red flowers, diamonds are her birth stone, the coral..my mom loves the sea, the sounds, smells and ever changing colours and tides.

I then filled it with jewelry for her.....but forgot all about the toe ring :o)

POOCHES

This I had to share!!!! This is sooo typical of Emma (the retriever being used as a couch) This gentle-natured pooch who has licked me sticky when I'm upset, who has sat with her head on my lap, staring lovingly at me for aaaages (and in fact who has often, when younger, sat ON my lap), drove miles and miles with me, fetching and carrying children, in the front seat of my car, suckled kittens, raised three young boisterous pups (including these two) and a few ducklings and baby rabbits, has been the most wonderful companion and playmate for every member of this family. She's old now...14.....and I suspect has congestive cardiac failure, so hasn't long left with us, but while she still is, I celebrate her!! This cute little pink number belongs to my dear friend who stayed with us for a bit. Her name is Bella and I have been sworn to secrecy as to her colour. She could never be anything other than pink!!!....she's more human than pooch! Here she completely took over my desk and computer....and with it, my heart!

Poignant moments

My mom gets a funny look on her face when she feels she's being 'naughty'...I happened to see a book that she's just finished reading and we had a little giggle. I adore this dear, sweet soul. The morning we left to go back to Gauteng, my dad woke up really early to make us our breakfast, setting the table, shuffling around the kitchen from 4am, really trying to make this special. He has battled to sleep for years but it doesn't worry him as he has an hours nap during the day. My memories of my dad, probably like most, are vague for a good part of my childhood. In honesty, I didn't have much of a relationship with my dad...but I remember the good things, like him carrying me on his shoulders as I was a dreamer and a somewhat weak and skinny little twerp and often used to lag behind, swimming till I was blue and him wrapping me tightly up in a towel and hugging me close to get me warm again, only to repeat the same procedure numerous times, helping him paint fences, patio furniture, make dog kennels (at least I think I helped him :o) ) bending over the open bonnet with him, trying to learn how to change a fan-belt and spark-plug. My mom has always loved lace and crocheted goodies...working a lot of it herself. This is the view from their window, but the lace valence makes the view...for me anyway.....just that little extra special....like its the frame that completes the picture. The little mirror, well that is super magnified for her to see the numerous little hairs on her chin which she laboriously has to remove every few days. The binocks....hell, they're as old as the hills...my dad uses them to survey the area......he often gets to see things in the adjacent park which, at his age, brings a smile to his face. My moms dressing table, the one which is now in one of their two spare bedrooms...the one she had as far back as I can remember. When they got another, this one went to my eldest sister, Colleen. It holds many memories for me. I suppose a pair of knickers is not the most appropriate picture to put on ones blog, but for me, this just typifies the simplicity, the realness of my mom, who she is, her age, all that she stands for, her femininity, her pride, her beautiful, gentle soul, .....its a simple reminder for me that she's alive and precious, she's here, and best of all ,she's my mom.

While at the Maritzburg rugby festival, we went to stay for a night at my parents flat in Doonside.

The older I get, and possibly, the older they get, I seem to be looking at them with a very different understanding and appreciation for everything that they have in the past and do, represent in my and my families lives; faults, failings, quirks, past and present gestures of love, all mean so much to me and was and is all part and parcel of the woman I have become....yes with faults, failings, quirks and gestures of love....all of my own.

I am a different soul born of different souls and yet all with loads of inherent behaviours and ideologies. I see them and truly love them, just for what and who they are, not only as my parents but as simple people with simple lives.......good, kind, loving and caring.

Does the past really matter if it has brought to the present, its own wisdom's and teachings and life-lessons that serve to somehow teach all through generations and genes, good, bad, happy and sad, traumas, every single experience in our life's journey....that we need to take and share as 'the elderly' one day.

I can choose a legacy of bitterness and anger that comes with having imperfect 'people' as my parents having experienced the hurts I felt as a result of their human faults and frailties, or I can chose the legacy of love and joy with comes with having someone...a mother and father, who accepted the gift of an imperfect child....ME...and raised me as best they knew how, in love, as best they understood it,.... as simple human beings, just trying to do the best they can. Being 'here' was not my choice but Gods and I am here because I was chosen to be part of this world, part of that family.....and I have a purpose and a mission that is not my own but HIS. He has put me here, full knowing that I have and will, make many mistakes in my life...and still, I am here.

I have yet to live up to His purpose...I often doubt that I will, for the cycle is continuing in me...an imperfect human, raising imperfect humans, imperfectly.

The fear and pride for a son

My son, the rugby player, returning to his hostel, brace, crutches and all, to be with his team mates.

The Maritzburg College Rugby festival is the biggest of its kind in Africa...but is also fraught with unnessesary dramas. There were two schools who withdrew due to injuries (12 broken clavicles alone in 2 days!!!)

Time to change the rules for schoolboy rugby???

My son as a charming (and whole) little

three year old. How time flies!!

The first day of the annual Maritzburg went off well. Here he's about to catch the ball (and get folded like a tortilla for his efforts)

How does a mother react when her almost 16 year-old man -child is lying of a rugby field screaming in pain???...my reaction was to be cool and controlled while in view of his team and spectators, but was mushy and huggy and full of tears, trying to comfort a bitterly dissappointed and pain-wracked son in the privacy of the emergency room. I said to lots of people that day that "thank goodness, I have only one son who enjoys playing rugby"...but in truth, I would have a hundred such sons...I am just so blessed with this one, a repeat..again and again ...would be a gift indeed.

Today, as a member of the De La Salle Pipe Band, they came first in their section in all divisions at the Lyttleton Mannor High interschools Gathering. This was wonderful for him and a slight buffer for the dissappointment of his injury last week.