Welcome to my ‘People of War’ art from my heaArt.

I’m not sure if it was a lightbulb moment or more a realization hitting me upside my head that I create art as a part of dealing with sadness, tragedies, and emotions.

As I was working on the third piece in this series, my husband was telling me about some of the details he was reading in a news article about a zoo in the Ukraine.  The sadness of the story just washed over me and brought me to tears. You know at time you just blurt things out, you don’t really know that you are saying something until you say it?  It’s like getting hit in the gut and you expel air, but instead of air you say a sentence.  I just said, not even knowing what I was saying, “That’s why I’m creating these painting, my People of War series.”   I don’t think I’ve ever truly admitted to myself or anyone, that I need to create to deal with sadness.  I wonder now if I didn’t paint and create, how would I be emotionally. In my own words, I always say I’m a tough old broad. I’m the last person to admit I need anything, lol or that’s what I always think.

My husband named this series for me.  The first piece that I did is my lady holding the sunflowers. When I showed it to him and said she needed a name, he said “People of War”.   He is my best critic when doing a painting and knowing if there needs any tweaking or if something isn’t reading correctly. He can see things that I don’t see.  Each of the painting so far and as I’m writing this, I just finished the third painting the man with the mustache, my husband’s responses to the paintings is not the same as usual. He’ has pointed out areas that he thought needed to be corrected, but there is something different in his responses.  After grilling him about why he doesn’t care for these paintings he stated I guess I don’t like realism.

This really struck me that he would say he doesn’t like realism.  He is the one that isn’t a fan of how I love to use color in a painting instead of the true colors.  I love using color for drama the telling of the story of a painting.  He will always say, but that’s not the real color of an animal.  So, in my head he was saying he preferred a realistic painting.  Aha, what he is really saying is that these painting of the “People at War” series hits home. They are what is happening in our world that’s why they are too realistic it is reality.  It helps me deal, but it brings the sadness of the tragedies of our world to other’s as they look at this series.  For my husband it brings back the sadness he dealt with everyday in his career.  The looking into the eyes of a person ladened with grief, sadness, and despair.

Welcome to my “People of War” series.