It’s oddly unseasonal.
We have strawberries growing in a pot beside the front door.
Chas has diligently plucked each one before it has blushed. But he missed one. I stole it and now it’s rotting on my studio tabletop. Maybe he’ll find it tomorrow when he raids the studio behind my back. He hasn’t done that in a while and there’s a whole pile of pillageable organized disorder, ripe for rape.
The other day, I found stabs and streaks from a dollmaking needle in a lovely unmarked portion of one of my paintings that I’d set out to cure. Chas was experimenting with intaglio. On top of my painting. So you can imagine my inner conflict, the inner art teacher catfighting the inner artist. Ack! Headache.
Sharing a studio is more intuitive to me than, say, deadbolting the door when I leave the room. I can’t bring myself to exclude them from that space any more than I can keep them out of the kitchen. There are certain illicit corners of the studio (you know, the cadmiums and cobalts, the guerilla art shelf with all the spray paint cans) that they will one day access through rite of passage, but for now are safe beyond reach. But we spend a few minutes each week together, putting things back in their own homes.
Growing up as a parent has helped me to learn to leggo my ego. If you’re a parent, wouldn’t you aggree?
I do agree about the ego thing, though sometimes when my daughter draws all over something I really liked, it takes stepping back and mental exertion to not lose my cool!