Day One:
I was inspired by Julie and Julia. This is not my first blog, and I give my daughter credit for suggesting that I blog in the first place (a year or two ago), but it didn't make sense to me until I saw the movie. Now I think I understand. I want to use this forum to set goals for myself and reach them, and these are the objectives that I am putting forth:
1. Teach myself to paint, so that in two years I can produce oil paintings that I consider professional, that I feel in control of, that have a theme and consistent style, and that comprise a body of work that I can approach galleries with. The plan is to work with my friend, Barbara, an artist in a similar life situation to mine, meeting weekly and giving ourselves assignments each week, to teach ourselves to paint.
2. Complete a long languishing project and thereby fulfill a promise. The project is to paint a body of work about terrorism in Israel. This grew out of my own feelings of my anger at a biased media, that chooses to show pictures of pain and suffering caused by Israel, but not the photos of suicide attacks perpetrated by terrorists, or the Israeli children terrorized and injured by rockets, i.e. to show the pain and suffering caused by hatred and violence against Israelis. As we all know, a picture is worth 1000 words. Think of a news article explaining Israel's actions as self defense, completed with a photo of a mourning, anguished Palestinian Mom with an injured child in her arms. What opinion would you form? The subtle but consistent promulgation of this prejudice is not fair. No one, Israeli or Palestinian, should have to suffer the pain of their children. It's not fair to create more hatred in the world for the Jews, who in my opinion, would like to live in peace with everyone, as we do here in the US. A more honest and balanced picture should be created. More about this project, and the obstacles and the paintings already done, later. The goal is to add five new paintings in the next 6 months. That would make 10 with what I already have.
3. For all this, I need to be healthier. One of the things that has slowed me down very badly is my heatlh. I'm now 65, and have a lot of aches and pains, diabetes with neuropathy in my feet, I don't sleep well, and am still overweight, although I have lost 25 pounds so far and it has helped some. I had polymyalgia rhumatica for two years of the last four. I have very little energy, and don't feel much like doing stuff. I know this is very boring, but I'm really writing this for myself, so I'm going to put this stuff on here as part of the picture. I really need more energy and strength to do the art work. So my goal is to lose 25 more pounds in the next 6 months. I'm slow....I'm a really compulsive eater, out of control. I am using the Weight Watchers program, working with the point system and going to meeting, as well as using Alli to help lose the weight, and with all the slips, it's taking a long time, but that is OK.
Enough writing for today. Today is Thursday. Before the end of the weekend, I will post some pictures of my art work, and the Israel paintings. I'll elaborate on my art background such as it is, and talk more about how the Israel project started and what happened so far. And I'll set some more specific goals for improving health.
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