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Three Months without Painting
June 2003
The last six months have been both the best and the worst of my art career. On March 24th I had surgery to reconstruct the basal joint in my right thumb. It was supposed to be a fairly straightforward operation - one which would rid me of the severe pain I had been experiencing in my hand for the past year as a result of arthritis. However, the surgery turned out to be more complicated than even the surgeon had expected due to the degree of deterioration of the joint. Unfortunately I also developed SRD (sympathetic regional dystrophy), a condition which causes the nervous system to overreact to physical trauma, producing an unusual (and unnecessary) amount of swelling and pain. The net result has been a very slow recovery. However, recovery it is! Yesterday I completed my first painting in three months. I'm celebrating!!
I'm one of those artists who tries to spend as many hours as possible in the studio every week. In fact, keeping OUT of the studio is hard for me. In my case the studio is next door to the kitchen, so the temptation to sneak in and start painting while preparing a meal is strong indeed. Every morning after breakfast I gather up yesterday's newspapers for recycling. Guess where the stuff for recycling is stored? Yep, in the studio. So the likelihood is that, while still in my pyjamas at around 7:30am, I'll pick up a paintbrush "just to touch up" or fix a canvas. I have more nightclothes spattered in paint than ones without. The sight of all those brushes and jars of paint and piles of collage and blank canvases and pens and oil pastels just waiting to be used is too much for me. Nothing feels better than a brush in the hand and the slosh of paint on canvas. Sometimes it can be cold in there at that hour, but I don't notice. Hours can pass in painterly absorption and silence (except for the sound of vigorous scrubbing of bristles against the support). If the phone rings, I don't answer it; if someone is at the front door, I ignore them. Those of you who share my obsession will know exactly what I mean.
At the beginning of this year my new gallery sprung the news on me that they were planning a solo show of my abstracts in April 2003. I would need around 30 paintings by the end of March. This is an unusually tight time-frame for an artist to prepare for a one-person exhibition, especially as the gallery space is huge. However, the gallery had just taken me on and they were eager to 'launch' me. How could I refuse? As ill-luck would have it, I had just been told by a specialist that the pain I was experiencing in both my hands could only be treated successfully with surgery. I should have the first operation - on my dominant hand - as soon as possible. Here was my dilemma: Did I turn down the offer of a solo show? Or did I accept the challenge, paint through the pain, and postpone the surgery? How could any artist turn down such a great opportunity? Certainly not me!
The artwork had to be completed by the end of March, so I scheduled my surgery for March 24th and began the most frenzied three months of my artistic career. I began by buying huge amounts of art supplies - large canvases, large bottles and jars of Golden paint, big brushes. I did not want my creative flow to be interrupted by lack of materials. Every day I disciplined myself to start work early in the morning, take a very short break for lunch, use the afternoon for computer work (the business side of art still had to be dealt with), then back to the studio for several more hours. Devoting the afternoons to office work or other errands was important for two reasons. Firstly, it gave me a chance to step back from my work and re-gather my creative forces. Secondly, it gave my hands a much-needed rest from the repetitive motions of cutting and pasting and painting. I took a lot of painkillers at times, but often I was so absorbed in the process of painting that I was only dimly aware of pain. Only when I stopped did it really cause me distress. (I didn't attempt to work in encaustic, since this was the medium that has caused my joints to deteriorate so fast. The scraping and etching on hardened wax with razor blades or small tools is very hard on the thumbs. I'll probably have to give it up for good.)
I never stopped to think what would happen if I ran out of ideas about what to paint. It seemed that the more I painted, the more I wanted to paint. One painting led inevitably to the next. This also helped to maintain the integrity of the new body of work. Of course, I hit problems - a composition which wouldn't work, colors which didn't look right, a desperate search for suitable collage elements - but by and large the process went well. In fact, I found that the more I painted the better I got. I grew in confidence because there was no one there to criticize what I was doing. I had a vision and I pursued it single-mindedly. The dealer didn't interfere; friends saw only glimpses of pieces in progress; only my husband was witness to the products of my endeavors and he knows exactly when to comment and when to keep quiet! As the deadline drew closer, I became more objective and critical, making improvements here and there, even scrapping a couple of paintings. I had already ordered museum-style maple frames for all the new works on paper. The canvases were made ready for hanging without frames and sides unpainted, as agreed in advance. On the appointed day, the dealer arrived to make the final selection for the show. Naturally I was apprehensive. What if he hated everything? I had all the paintings arranged in the studio with the numerous lights judiciously spotlighting them, so that the colors really glowed. He didn't pick everything I'd painted, so it was just as well I'd done so much, but he did pick the ones I myself felt were strongest. Unexpectedly he decided to hold back the works on paper for another time. At first, this was hard to accept, as I'd spent so much money on having frames made, but they'll be ready when the time comes. (I've since sold about half of them in open studio and workshops.)
As soon as the work was delivered to the gallery, I went in to the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center for my surgery. As I said earlier, it took longer than expected. Nevertheless, the first couple of weeks went according to plan and, with a large cast on my right arm, I became adept at using my left hand for everything. The pace of my life slowed down considerably, though, and I spent a lot of time reading. I couldn't drive, but friends rallied round to do the twice-weekly run to the hospital for out-patient visits. Everyone was wonderfully supportive and I was happy. I even took a vacation in Palm Springs with my husband. The opening of the show was a huge success with about 200 people in attendance. Over the following weeks paintings sold for prices I would never have dreamed of asking a couple of years ago. At the same time I became aware that my hand was not healing well. Whereas in the beginning I experienced less pain than is normal for this surgery, gradually the pain got worse. After 4 weeks I was expected to be able to drive again, but this proved impossible. I felt trapped in my house, though I occasionally walked the two miles down the hill to the nearest shopping mall. I grew tired of sitting and reading. I also grew heartily sick of constant visits to the doctor. It soon became apparent that it would be hard to fulfill teaching commitments. Above all, I was missing my painting. There was a huge gap in my life. I tried to paint with my left hand, but with all the extra pressure on it from doing all the things my right hand normally does, the arthritis worsened considerably.
At the beginning of June I flew to Montreal to teach a 4-day workshop in abstract painting. If it hadn't been too late to do anything about it, I would have canceled it. However, the contact with artists firsthand proved a generally positive experience, and despite considerable clumsiness I was able to do some demonstrations. Above all, I regained some confidence. I also saw a wonderful Edouard Vuillard exhibition at La Musé e des Beaux Arts, which I found enormously inspiring. Similarly, a show of David Rabinovitch's sculptures and drawings at La Musée d"Art Contemporain was a revelation. I felt the old creative excitement stir.
Then yesterday I began to paint again - tentatively at first with a brush held loosely in my right hand, occasionally shifting it to my left to relieve the pressure on the joint. The paint began to flow more effortlessly. The tension fell away. Awkwardly I pasted tissue paper and newspaper onto the support for texture. It didn't matter that it couldn't be placed precisely, since it would all be covered in paint later. Amazingly I found that I could hold a large permanent pen in my right fist and write with it. Why hadn't I discovered this earlier? I guess I was depressed and had lost faith in my ability. Over the course of several hours, with breaks in between, I completed the painting I have titled "Recovery".