One lonely night in late 2006, I was mindlessly wandering through the Internet. My husband had died after three years of fighting cancer and I was lost and alone, looking for something, anything to ease the pain. Somehow I wound up on a site offering a one-week workshop on digital collage in a small fishing village just south of Puerto Vallarta.
Immediately, I signed up even though I didn’t know how to use Photoshop, the prerequisite for the course. The class was three weeks away; I had time to learn it.
Little did I know how thoroughly grief sapped energy.
The days drifted away; Photoshop remained in the box (which was how software was sold back then). As the workshop got closer, I developed a fear of being the dunce of the class, the person who asks the stupid questions and whines a lot. The fear grew enough that I finally installed the software on my laptop. One look at it though and I was frozen in fear. I can’t do this!
Plan B: I scheduled the flight to arrive a day early so I could do a crash learning course. That plan went askew when the flight out of Fresno was cancelled due to mechanical problems. Fear and anxiety grew. Thoughts of cancelling altogether took root, however, the next morning I was back at the waiting gate.
Cancelled again. This was a sign. I was not supposed to go. Now not only would I be the dunce of the class, I would miss the whole first day. I emailed the instructor about my plight and he said to come anyway; everything would be okay.
Third morning at the airport, somewhat hoping for another cancellation, the plane took off on time.
My journey with art had been long: initiated in my mid-20s when a friend I worked with pulled me into an art supplies store and insisted that I buy paints, brushes, and canvas. Years of unhappy art, disappointing canvases, and frustrating workshops followed. Eventually. collage seemed to offer a possibility; however, I never seemed to master glueing. Wrinkles and bubbles marred every image. When I saw the workshop offering digital collage, I thought that might be an answer: no more glueing.
Stepping into a different world
I arrived in the small fishing village of Boca de Tomatlán and was poled across the river by a man in a ponga and met by a housekeeper who showed me to the room that would become my portal to a new life. However, I didn’t know that then. I only knew I was about to face my fear of failing once again at art and being the incompetent loser in the class.
The next day, I met Robert Masla, the owner-instructor of Casa de las Artistas, who welcomed me with words I hadn’t imagined possible: you’re the only person in the class.
For the rest of that week, in Bob’s open air studio, art grew within me like the proverbial bean stalk, nourished by the beauty surrounding me and Bob’s gentle guidance into a new way of looking at photography and the endless world of Photoshop. The opening image came out of that week.
The two years that followed that workshop continued to be hard: my mom and my second mother died, I lost my home and what I thought might be a last “happily ever after” relationship which had taken me away from my beloved California. I even lost custody of Missy, the sweetest toy poodle ever, (although unexpectedly a year later, we were rejoined even though she cost me half a house. And, well worth it she was.)
Throughout those trying times, what flourished was the art that filled what I called my “watching grass grow” days. Slowly my competence with Photoshop improved and an unexpected art sensibility appeared. When an opportunity came to return to California, I moved to an artsy community just outside Yosemite and was accepted into a gallery. The day I sold my first piece of art is framed in my memory.
A few years later, a friend invited me to join four women on a cruise/growth experience to Mexico. I had started a memoir about the losses of the previous years and wound up spending a good bit of the cruise sitting in the cafeteria writing and weeping. Words poured out … some 20,000 of them within those few days. By the time we docked back in Los Angeles, the memoir was done and I felt cleansed. The grief was still there, would always be there, but it now walked hand-in-hand with art and writing.
It makes me smile to think of this Joy after the Fire period of my life, 20 years in all from cancer diagnosis through arrival back to the only place that has ever felt like home: Santa Barbara, with my twin joys of writing and art now finding a home in this remarkable place we call Substack.
We never know what this thing we call life has in store for us. I have learned to be grateful for the wonder of it all.
Here is my most recent bit of art: Barbara’s Bowing Flower.
In the meanwhile …
What a journey. I love how you went to Mexico in spite of your fears. You've been through so much and used those struggles to create, to create art and a beautiful life.
I have begun to think that memoire should NOT be written from the point of view of accomplishments, but from setbacks & therefore, unexpected lessons learned. Thanks, I especially love the daring decision to go to Mexico and how hard it was to get there.