Art Envy

Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, but I must admit to art envy. When I see posts by people of their paintings (and you know who you are!) I'm a bit jealous. I can't help it. I grew up with a big brother that could sketch anything he saw. My brother is an incredible artist, although he's done NOTHING with it. If I had his talent, oh well, I'll not go there. The painting above is an oil of my Dad, done by an old friend of mine. She did it in 1992. He never had it framed so when he died suddenly in 1998, my brother and I decided to have it framed for his memorial service. His service was on Friday afternoon. We went to a frame shop on Thursday. We walked in, picked out the perfect frame and they said, "Okay, this will be ready on Monday." I burst into tears, explained our situation and they said, "Well can you come back in 2 hours?" It just so happened there was a Chili's in the same parking lot, so that was not a problem. But I digress.

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I guess I'm just naturally attracted to artists. Most of the stuff in my house is by people I know and love. I even have a rare (or the only) oil painting in existence by my Mom. I have a lovely pastel by my step-mother and a few drawings by my brother. I have THREE paintings by the artist that painted my Dad, including one of her self-portraits. She and I met in a ballet class and took several dance classes over the years. Unfortunately we lost touch about 4 years ago. She's a professional artist and her paintings are very expensive so I guess I got lucky (although Dad did pay for his portrait). His portrait now hangs in a prominent spot in our library. I have pictures of that somewhere.

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Back to art envy. To be fair to myself, I can be creative. Some of my stuff: killer personalized birthday cards, bathroom wall sponging, a nice shadowbox frame of Hawaii mementos, a really cool panda and bamboo drawing on the thigh of a pair of old jeans (yes, it was the early 90's) and my very favorite: I used S-shaped styrofoam packing peanuts and gold acrylic paint to replace a missing corner of a gold ornate frame on an old painting of my Dad (not the one above). The thing is, I can't just paint a picture of something. So even though it's a deadly sin, I have to tell you artists that I am jealous. Okay now I have to show you one big thing I painted. Several houses ago, my daughter's closet door and bedroom door were next to each other in the corner. I decided to paint this Snoopy and Charlie Brown on the doors (you can see the doorknobs). So this is my one painting: