Do you mean what do I get paid to do? Or what do I spend most of my time doing? or what would I be doing if I didn't have any family responsibilities?
What do I do well? Or Just for fun. Just for me?
What do I do that's important, or frivolous. Selfish. Selfless.
What did I do yesterday, or today, or last month...or tomorrow?
No answers here.
I joke that I've aleady had three or four careers...
I worked in the clinic all day yesterday and will be working almost every other day through the Summer before we head back again to Italy. And since my free time now is spent keeping up with the medical world--reviewing charts and current practice there's no time now for painting or printing. We still commute between two worlds. Italy where I get to be a dad/farmer/printmaker/artist and the US where I jump back completely into the medical world of patients, long shifts and the desire to make people well and the everpresent fear of making a mistake or missing something serious.
But we will head back to Italy in September:
The boys will be back in school and Fall chores in the fields will beckon--maybe there will still be time to put in strawberries or seed a cover crop in the bottom fields or squeak in some spinach and lettuce to overwinter.
Then maybe I'll have a moment to pull out my sketchbooks again.
I have some wood planks waiting and a few ideas I've been kicking around for years that I've been hoping to get onto paper eventually.
Hope the summer allows your ideas to marinate fully so that when you get back to those planks it flows easily for you!
ReplyDeleteI have a good one year backlog of prints so it's really just studio time I need.....what would happen once I finish those ideas is an unknown as there's a long backlog but not much new stuff....
ReplyDelete(I haven't done any sketching in ages, and that is usually the simulus for new work...).
I envy your courage to devote your energy full time to your art...you've been productive and consistently coming up with strong work so it was clearly a good decision.
Aww Andrew, this is such a nice post.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's amazing that you make time to be a dad a farmer a husband an artist and a doctor too across the world.
I don't know exactly how you manage but it sounds like a great life.