A New Year Is Waiting…..

Our little house faces east, and in the morning, when there is sun on the wet coast, the light streams in. It was streaming in when I opened the studio door, lighting up the paints and brushes on the table.

The paints and brushes are waiting. The brushes, waiting to be used and the paint, waiting to be transformed, from color in a tube to color on canvas. I have left these paints and brushes here ready to use. There is a latency to this little tableau. There is also intent.

Now that all the holidays are done and the decorations put away, and we are making our way through the last of the baking and the eggnog, the plan is to work on painting again. Something I haven’t really done for years. But I’m feeling a need for a change from mosaics. I’m feeling a need for a change, period.

Is it the New Year syndrome? I don’t like to make resolutions, I rarely keep them. But this year, I don’t feel the need to make resolutions but to make changes. I hardly know what the changes will be yet. But I’m looking at what I need. One is more time for painting, artwork, writing. The other is more room, less luggage, less “stuff”. So today, the paints may be used or perhaps I’ll start looking at clearing out room for work, clearing spaces by getting rid of some “stuff”. Or who knows, I may start looking for a bigger place for all my stuff instead. I mean some of it is really good useful stuff. There are big work tables waiting in the basement for a bigger studio. There is a big table leaning on the bedroom wall, legs removed, waiting for a much larger dining room for big happy dinner parties.

My old dusty dictionary defines latent as ” hidden, dormant but capable of being developed, present but not seen until some change occurs”. It’s almost poetic. The online dictionary adds another dimension. Latent as potential. Like that too.

So my New Year, like the paints, has a latency to it. The Year and my time in it, is waiting to be used and transformed, waiting for all those changes to occur. All that time, all those decisions…..might be exciting.