Fancy Pants Negroni

Fancy Pants Negroni. Oil on panel, 6" x 6". ©2019.

I'm a bit rusty.

It doesn't help that I chose to paint the most complicated new pieces in my prop cabinet, I suppose. But anyway, being that this is the first post in my new blog, I probably should explain a bit.

In 2016, I stopped painting cocktails after finishing my second book, Mixology With a Twist. Then I did something completely different: I switched mediums and subject matter, creating large-scale enamel works of animals. I got into a gallery I'd wanted to be part of for years, the enamels sold, and I got a two-person show scheduled for November 2017.

In August of 2017, everything came crashing down.

My husband and best friend Paul was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. His first chemo treatment landed him in the hospital for three weeks. He never got to have a second chemo treatment. I lost him on the last day of September 2017. His world ended, and so did mine.

Somehow, probably just to make him proud, I managed to get into the studio and make a few new pieces for the show. But circumstances required that I start working at the brewery where we were part owners, and that's all I had in me. Widowhood is not a good source of inspiration or energy. Getting up in the morning is a win.

Then, in February, my mom had a stroke. She had just worked out at the gym, then gone home and shoveled snow. The next morning, she was gone. I lost two of the three most important people in my life in five months. My amazing dad and I now had the worst possible kind of bond. We've helped each other muddle through the best we can.

Still, everything is upside down. The brewery takes up my days, and the enameling studio is slowly turning into an Airbnb. But little by little, with the help of a sweet new man in my life, a spare bedroom in the house has been turned back into a tiny painting studio. And today I finished my first tiny painting. Right now, that's all I have space for. And I'm a bit rusty.

Onward.