Surviving September
2020 has been by far the strangest year of my lifetime. For those of us in the United States, it’s going to be a very fraught road all the way to the end of the year. Here in California, so many of us are ready to feel joyful gratitude if we are only able to stand outside for a moment, breathing clean air. Our San Francisco streets are quieter this year, and our August fog mixes with the wildfire smoke. There are more tent cities clustered into whatever spaces the city is willing to ignore, and the San Francisco Financial District is more canyon-like than ever: stark and empty, with breaths of wind sweeping across the smooth, blank faces of the high-rise buildings.
2020 is the kind of year when every time I open the news, it seems scarcely credible that life can go on, but of course it does, replete as always with humdrum duties and small pleasures.
Since the start of the lockdown, I’ve had a great deal of sales and commissions. I also have eight original paintings up at Avenue 12 Gallery, in San Francisco’s Richmond District (available for sale and show, by appointment). If I am ever in doubt about how essential art is to survival, it is good to remember that all crises in history have been preceded, accompanied, and succeeded by art. My flower paintings have been especially popular. Flowers and the seasonal phases they quietly move through—blooming, seeding, fruiting, propagating, and withering back into the earth—are hopeful little things for us, during this long year in which life seems to be holding her breath. It’s September, but it still feels like March.
Every one of my commissioned paintings have given me a lot of joy. Some have been more structured and formal (such as the art I made for an essay in Emergence Magazine), and some have been quite casual. Some customers gave me carte blanche concerning the artistic decisions that needed to be made, and some were intensely involved and wanted to collaborate. Every one of them was wonderful. It is a precious thing to have a deep connection to a stranger all at once, and to feel as though I am looking into his mind while I work. In one case, I never spoke directly to the customer; his request was mediated by a gallery owner. In another, I spoke with a customer for over an hour about planning out the painting. Both experiences were equally pleasant, equally satisfying for my customers and for myself.
Clock Iteration III, 12 x 12 inches. Ink and watercolor on paper.
Survival is mundane. It is fed by the smallness of our lives, and it is the little duties and pleasures that pull us forward, day by day. I don’t think there is anything ignoble about this. Don’t we love art because it draws our attention to littlenesses of life? And then the little things are unexpectedly exalted, and your mind is suddenly seven miles high and looking across the surface of civilization before you have realized what has happened to you.
My life now is mostly occupied with my family: my wife, my elderly parents, and my 15 month old daughter. I clean the house, I grow vegetables in the garden, I cook meals, and I pet our cats. I visit my parents several times a week: twice as a family and once or twice on my own. I go to my studio on Tuesdays and Thursdays, whether I feel like it or not. I stay as late as I need to, and I sometimes treat myself and order Ethiopian food to supply both lunch and dinner. One day I spent an entire studio day reading, and another I painted ceaselessly for almost 12 hours, and both days were time well-spent.
I have found that I have more energy to help others when I put aside the things I have little or no influence to change. Inside the citadel of my own influence, I have more to give. Outside it, I can choose people more knowledgeable than me to listen to, follow, and support: the wise people, the scientists, the leaders I trust, and the brave warriors. But the citadel is strong, and I feel strong in consequence of it. It teaches me what I can do, and what I cannot, and the days therefore always contain exactly what I can manage.
Hang in there, everyone.