On the Road Update

Hanging with the fam.

I have been enjoying my kids this week. Here is a picture of me that my daughter-in-law Katia took of me after dinner at their apartment in Fort Worth while I was sporting a pair of Zach’s sunglasses.

below: Brittany, Katia and Zach at the William Campbell Gallery.

My kids have hung out making art in my studios and I have drug them around to gallery openings since they were little. It was rarely an easy life. Joy is tucked in the moments along the way. It is a special pleasure to me for us all to have survived to adulthood with our relationships strong and intact. I think we are all proud of each other and all feel hopeful for the future to be carried on into the next generation by the new little genius Henry (below) my grandson.

I hope you will indulge my sharing this moment of family. But this is that time of the year - the holidays - when family matters traditionally take precedence for those who have and maintain family relationships.

This coming week, we’ll all be converging in Saint Louis - where my mom and brothers live - for Thanksgiving this year. A rare event for us to all be together. This will be followed by a bash the following day for my mom’s 90th birthday (postcard designed by Brittany below) show up if you are in the area.

I have always been a rolling stone myself, following my own trail where ever it leads. This has caused me to not be as available to everyone in my family as much as I probably should have been over the years but I have been trying to do better. Compared to most people I am pretty much a lone wolf type. I am not unsociable or particularity anti social but I have always been happy with my own company and I enjoy quietude. My mom is pretty much the same way - sociable but perfectly happy to be alone. Most people are not like that I presume.

At the same time I am not that much of a traveler but more of a homebody type. I like being in my own hermitage and engaged in my own inner life. Yet I rarely ever feel even a tinge loneliness. I always feel everyone I know is with me and I am with everyone. We are all here together hunkered down in our individual lives on this little spinning speck of dust floating around in endless space and time doing the best we can with what we’ve got. Life is tough all around and when it is not, it soon will be.

Ok, granted, I took a bit of a dark turn there. I think my point is that, understanding the fragile yet resilient nature of life, being able to participate in it with a measure of autonomy is a great privilege and opportunity that should be appreciated, cherished and exercised. That is something to be joyful and grateful about. To be able to work at leisure at our art is a wonderful thing if we are able to carve out the accommodation to practice it. As a studio artist that requires a significant measure of solitude.

My youngest, Noor-un-nisa is celebrating her 30th birthday today with her boyfriend and later with my wife Rosalia for dinner in Santa Fe while I am out on the road. We facetimed to sing Happy Birthday to Nisa!