Watercolor: Pssst, are you gonna eat that last French Fry?

“Why, of course I’m still painting!” Georgia O’Keefe exclaimed to a New York Newspaper at the age of seventy five. “I’m not old, or worn out.” No such thing as retirement existed when life and work were so interlocked.  Since she had less stamina now, however, she was likely to go to bed as early as seven o”clock on painting days.  Around this time, she described her life to writer Lee Nordness: “One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days.  On the other days, one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do. You get the garden planted, you get the roof fixed, you take the dog to the vet, you spend the day with a friend, you learn to make a new kind of bread. You line up photographs for someone who thinks he needs them. You certainly have to do the shopping. You may even enjoy doing such things. You think they have to be done. You eve think you have to have some visitors, or take a trip from to keep from getting queer from living alone with just two Chows. But always, you are hurrying through these things with a certain amount of aggravation, so that you can get at the paintings again, because *that* is the high spot.  In a way, it is what you do all the other things for.  The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that makes one’s life.”

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Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art Blog