As careers go, mine is awesome. By day I am a subatomic physicist, and I LOVE my job. As a hobby, oil painting provides me a creative outlet and putting the paint to the canvas is in itself, a very satisfying process. That I get to have an outlet, and create something that might make others happy, is a huge bonus.
The name of the studio has a deep meaning for me. I have suffered through 8 miscarriages. So I have 3 living children out of 11 pregnancies. There is so much emotion surrounding a miscarriage; physical pain, anger, anguish, and shame.
My lowest point was when I realized that I was feeling hate and jealousy when I saw other families with infants and young children. Eventually, with the help of several wonderful doctors, I was able to have my 3 wonderful children. As I work on this self-portrait over the years, I add layers of paint. Sometimes I am trying to erase something I want to fix. Sometimes I am adding more of what I like, or tweaking it a bit. It makes me think of the process of living - the mistakes and bad things are still there, but we can embrace them, and tweak them, and turn them into something new.
We are all a work in progress.
