"My Son"

Alas, all good things must come to an end.

And so it is true with my four week color foundation art class.

These past—beyond intense—weeks have been the best four straight weeks of my life in recent memory.

To say “I loved it!” doesn’t do justice.

It was fun, exhilarating and one huge confidence booster. 

It was also hard, hard work and I often stayed up until the wee hours of the morning working on projects or the required sketchbook. 

Again, I loved every minute of it!

My professor was great, as were my classmates.  I will miss them all.

I struggled, and I soared, at varying times during the session.

Most recently I struggled with my final project—using expressive color to create art based on an emotion, past experience, etc.

A classmate dubbed my piece “My son.”

I had hoped to create a fabric and photo montage, or a collage, of the emotional journey with the teenager—from toddler-hood through teen-hood.

Alas, it looked instead like a gargantuan scrapbook page—not at all what I was aiming for nor the note I wanted to end on.

So at the 11^th hour I decided to forego the montage effect and let the background stand alone and be the final piece, with a few little embellishments.

I’m neither content nor satisfied with the final product, but have made peace with it.

Hard to tell if my prof liked it or not.

He made seemingly positive comments and intimated (I think) that it has a sense of “distilled clarity,” which is a good thing. 

Still, hard to tell what he actually thought.

Creating this piece took me on a roller coaster of an emotional journey: looking at photos of the teenager as a smiling toddler who allowed me to hug and hold him in my arms and in later years increasingly distanced himself by standing just “that” little bit of distance away from me.

So the piece contains a great deal of symbolism, which can also be interpreted by the viewer.

Don't know if I'll get my usual grade, but I’ve made peace with that too.  

I've come to realize that the true value in taking this class is not garnering the coveted “A,” but rather learning to grow artistically. 

I believe I have.

How to read "My Son"

From right to left (the reverse of all other art):

The vibrant and highly saturated, warm, happy and sometimes simultaneous contrasting colors represent the unconditional love between the toddler and his mom—me. The final piece has a few Lego pieces attached in bright primary colors, which, together with the buttons, are falling towards the left to represent (as does the downward slant of some of the fabric pieces) how the toddler moves—away from me.

The piece gradually darkens to create an atmospheric expression of brooding, moodiness and a sense of closing down—the dark squares on the bottom left representing a barrier, along with the stripes adjacent to the horses—hurdles for him on his journey of life or perhaps for me to jump over as he continues to distance himself from me. The long vertical piece on the left is a tie, representing how my baby is becoming a young man...sigh.

As they say, all good things must come to an end.

Our children can’t stay toddlers, or need mom, forever.

Fortunately each new stage is a wondrous—if sometimes painful—experience.