artiSt, book designer, calligrApher, WRiter, måker
I was 36 when I lost my son in 1987; he was only 4. Many years have passed, years I never expected to survive. Now in my 70s, I am continually surprised to find myself alive and often thriving. Content, at peace, finding joy…these were things I never expected…but these are the some of the things I’ve found, threaded among the sorrows.
Of the years following Alex’s death, I slowly came to inhabit a grief that had become a familiar – and not unwelcome – companion. But it still seems strange to find myself here, alive, and how am I ever to write about it so someone unknown to me might understand?
Art is one of the ways another’s grief can live on the page, in the dance, on the canvas, within the music. Art is an honest attempt to say what cannot be said, at least in polite company, eh?
A long time ago I wanted to draw. Maybe I already could, but I had forgotten. (We sometimes lose our way.)
I was by career a book designer & calligrapher – comfortable with pen & paper, letters & words, but a stranger to images & color. When a calligraphy teacher once asked us to draw a self-portrait sketch inside a Celtic knot, I remember how I slapped my pen to the table & cried out, “I can’t draw!” He kindly asked me, “Christi, can you make an A?”…Yes…“Then you can draw.” And maybe that idea took hold.
Here’s my first lesson for anyone who has a deep wish, whether it’s for drawing or something equally huge: ASK.
So I did, and soon tried my 1st drawing class with its requisite sketchbook practice of 60 pages by semester’s end.
i discOvereD that dRåwing MakeS me happY
