Small Things

The small things in life are the big things.

Recently, I’ve had to put up with rather irritating happenings. People who know me will tell you that when it comes to house projects including repairs, I get bent out of shape. It’s not that I’m too lazy to do the work or hire someone to do the work, but I get super stressed and panicky. House matters give me a headache. So do plane delays, for that matter. And traffic.

But when petty problems get to me, I recalibrate. I remind myself that such nuisances are really small things in life. Throughout my breast cancer diagnosis and treatments, all I wanted was a sense of normalcy in a world gone awry. Instead I bore witness to my own breast cancer experience. And despite all the losses that this disease incurred upon me, I find myself blessed to find that home repairs are part of what occupies my time.

Long ago, I realized that what many regard as the small things in life – the taste of freshly brewed coffee, nature, and art – are really the big things. And I marvel that my daughter and I found each other. She, from a rural area in China, and I, from a large American city, discovered that love knows no borders.

And years before she was even born, I walked into a local craft store for oil painting lessons and walked out as an artist. Art would become the foundation for my life, as well as a passion that my daughter and I share. This passion also knows no borders.

Now I find that art has also borne witness to the breast cancer experience – in the Breast Cancer, Female and Young series that I’m close to finishing. Dear readers, I just started the first draft of the grand finale of this series, a 18-inch by 36-inch oil painting titled Surrender (at the end of this essay). I will be adding more paintings to the collection, however; Surrender is just the last oil in the series. The others will be watercolors.

I started this painting with a base layer of a mostly pink woman on a Naples Yellow-lightened-with-Titanium White background. I used a thin layer of paint throughout. You can still see pencil marks from where my daughter and I made changes to the original sketch. Right now, I am keeping the lines visible to help guide me. One oil painting teacher on YouTube recommends putting down the first layer and not worrying about making other changes until that first layer is down.

Done. So far, so good.

The figure will be mainly in pinks, blues, and purples, I think. Her head, whose face I just created, needs to be more laid down to give more of a surrenderlike pose. As I was painting this figure, I felt her come to life – from a sketch to a body. And I noticed that I smiled with joy during the entire painting session.

I had two obstacles. The first was all in my mind. I was initially intimidated to paint on such a large-to-me canvas with large-to-me brushes. My friend and fellow artist Alene really helped me out by encouraging me to just put paint on the canvas before getting serious. This way, I would feel less intimidated. It worked.

The second obstacle is all in my body. In mid-May, I took a bad fall (is there ever a good one?), and I landed on my hands. The pain in my fingers was so bad for the first few days after the mishap, that turning a book’s pages was excruciating. For a while, my hands seemed to be getting better until I re-injured them by weeding recently in the garden. I am seeing an orthopedic doctor in a couple of weeks.

My hands almost always hurt when I’m using them. In fact, typing this essay has been slightly painful, as was painting the first draft of Surrender. Still, I smiled the whole way through the painting because I was in my happy place – creating art.

Working on this last oil painting of the series is bittersweet. I have so enjoyed working on the Breast Cancer, Female and Young oil paintings that I don’t want to finish this part of the series. Yet, I’m really looking forward to seeing how this figure turns out.

Anticipation is a huge thing.

Original sketch on canvas, with markings for corrections

First draft of the oil painting, just a pink lady right now.

A closeup of her torso thus far

Her outstretched “ballet” foot. I just added toes; more definition will follow. This replaces the original foot.