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Making Art at 83
I hope you will forgive my rather confusing first and second blog. I didn't realize that my first entre had actually published so wrote a second. Oh well! It is sometimes hard to keep things together when you are my age. Not that I have ever kept things together very well
when I was younger. I didn't have age as an excuse then. Organization is not one of my strong traits. It might be why I am having trouble getting my ideas together for an upcoming show in May. It is an all women's show with a feminist theme. I have many ideas floating around in my brain but none have actually come together.
I have been thinking about the Bluestockings, the first Feminist group. They were forward thinking, intelligent women in the 1700's who wanted to be able to discuss intellectual subject and live independent lives as the men did.
In those days a woman was supposed to think only of getting married and having babies, particularly sons to keep the family name going. The Bluestockings rejected this notion and held glittering salons with even some men invited. All sorts of upper class people were anxious to be invited. The Bluestocking women wrote novels and books of poetry. They also live rather scandalous lives taking lovers without marriage.
Now how to put that into a painting? I am working on a drawing of a women sitting on a stack of books, legs in the air showing off her
blue stockings. I will need more than that but it is a start. If you read this, please leave some ideas for me. and thank you for sticking with my ramblings.
In the Beginning I didn't know I was an artist or the art and art history were my passion for the first 50years of my life. I discovered this large thing about myself when I decided to volunteer at the Corcoran Gallery of Art ( still morn Its passing) and sign up for an Art History class at NOVA. A huge window opened up for me. I mean I really loved this stuff. I then began to attend Docent training at the Corcoran and studio art classes along with art history at Northern Va. Community College. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. Here I was doing something I discovered I absolutely was in love with but I also discovered "Kathleen Norris Stark, person". Pure Joy !
When I was an art student, part time, at the Corcoran , in m yearly 20's I really didn't know what being an artist meant. I was told to fall in love, get married, have babies and then come back and be an artist. It wasn't possible for a woman to do both! ( This was 1962 so take that for what it is worth.) Since a certain handsome young man wanted to marry me and I didn't know I could do both, I chose to get married, have three babies and forget about being an artist.
It wasn't until my youngest baby went off to college, that I started to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Then I found my passion, ART, and have never looked back Now I don't say that I am a great artist or even a very good artist. I do say that I love making art and I love sharing it with other people. I love being around those people who also love, love, love art the way I do. I think I would die if I didn't or couldn't make art. So now you know! I am an eccentric, bohemian , crazy81 year old woman who lives to make art and share it.
IF you feel the same way about art as I do, I would love to hear from you. Please look at my website and give me your thought as well. That is all for now. Aug 10, 2023
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