My second painting.

I started my second painting within my art class but…. Covid. That dreaded pandemic that we thought would last two weeks. I remember being in class and one student said she wouldn’t be back because of this disease going around. This was before mandatory quarantine.

But as I said in my last post, I continued painting at home with thoughts, suggestions via email from my teacher. What a blessing to have that!

I remember painting the landscape and then the footbridge. I thought I had finished it before the final version below, but I kept looking at the painting thinking, “something isn’t right.” I could not put my finger on it. About five days later, a lightbulb went off in my head. It was the bridge. I had the upper part up too high like it was going to the sky. So, I redid it to what you see below. It’s now hanging in our living room.

How many times do we think we’ve finished something, but something doesn’t “feel” right? And you aren’t sure what it is. That’s happened to me quite a number of times throughout my life.

I thought I had my life figured out at the age of 18. The joke was on me. I went to college, quit after about a month as I wasn’t happy and swore, I would never attend a class again, ever! But I did. I was working as a legal secretary and knew this wasn’t my final version. I started going back to school part-time. Knowing that it would take 8 years to finish at that pace, I decided to go to a different school full-time. I finished in three years having unbelievable growth experiences along the way. After three years working in politics, I moved on to graduate school and earned my Master’s in International Affairs.

I reinvented myself numerous times and still do. We can always “fix” something that isn’t right or do a new version. Sometimes it is hard, as I’m finding in my life right now. We can’t “fix” others. But we can grow as a person within ourselves and hope that others will become better when we do.

Copyright © Kathy Fountaine (image and text)