Undecided

Another painting from my new series “Too Small, Too Young”.

Undecided, 15.5 “x 20”, mixed media painting on wood stretcher.

This series is about being a child now, looking back and/or remembering being a child and also about being an adult/parent watching  your child grow up.  It is bitter sweet to say the least.

Sometimes I find myself looking at my children and feeling  unbearably sad.  I know that this sounds crazy  but it is because I am not really looking at them right now, instead I am thinking about how much smaller they were not so long ago or how soon they are going to be all grown and leaving me.  Awful I know, but it is the truth.  I think about how far away my own childhood seems now, how foggy my memories are.  How young my parents were.

In many ways, these are timeless paintings.  They live neither in or out doors but exist simultaneously in both.  If as though, our memories can be in some other plain all together, existing in our mind but also in this place that shifts back and forth, in and out of focus.  Often hard for us to grasp completely, save a snippet here, a smidgen there.

I guess in these works I am trying to capture  childhood, mine and my children’s and to somehow hold onto it for a little bit longer.  If I can’t manage it in real life, perhaps painting it will  help me remember to think less and be more.

December 29, 2008 | Categories: Art with Children, Home, illustration, inspired by children, life, mixed media, Mother finding time, original art, Pace-Wynters, Painting, paintings, writing | Tags: childhood, looking back, looking forward, Maria Pace-Wynters, memories, now, painting series, sadness, too small | Comments Off on Undecided