the stress and strain is getting to me

All these weeks of solid painting and working on all the components for the show are finally catching up with me. Yesterday I spent time in the studio signing paintings and adding a few final touches, and in putting my work easel up and down all day I strained my left wrist (the one that I landed on many years ago when I was holding my infant daughter in my other arm walking into that Florida Kmart with the wet floor after a rain storm.) It will be fine and only flairs up when I do too much with it. In a day or two it will be better if I rest it.

I am really feeling the stress of working straight through the weekends and starting all over again on Monday (too much work makes Judith a very dull girl) but in the end it is all worth it for the good PR and opportunity to showcase the work. All in all I know at this point that I have done everything that I could do to work hard, paint well, be prolific, do my PR, and breathe my essence into every piece I will show at the Washington School of Photography. That is a good feeling!

I had a very interesting visitor to the studio yesterday afternoon. Virginia had arrived to sit with me to do her computer work and offer moral support on a tough day, and into my studio walked an extended family.

There was a beautiful little girl with the most incredible blue eyes, and an eleven year old boy with a passion for art that has extended at least three generations - same as me. His grandmother was there (a museum goer and passionate arts supporter), his father was there (an art history major), and this young man and I had a discussion about my work in which he was eerily knowledgeable and expressively verbal.

I was delighted by his interest and he told me that he likes to sketch a lot. I asked his dad if I could offer him a gift, and went to get one of my new 6H (magical) pencils for him to take home.... they make very fine, light lines in sketching.... well, it turns out this young man had me beat, he has 9H pencils at home, a gift from his European mother. Well! I didn't even know there were 9H pencils!! I told him that I am going to have to go shopping for some at Plaza, and when he left the room with his sister (to whom I gave postcards) I told his loving dad that they need to keep him in all the art supplies he wants. Turns out that the young man and I like to shop at the same art supply stores too.

There is hope for the world yet in the children.