"Winter Light on Pears" oil This afternoon I caught sight of just exactly how much dust had populating our living room (notice how I personified it -- as if it LIVES AND BREEDS). I didn't even bother to factor in the number of spider webs which colonize the space between the screens and the pane in the casement windows. At that moment, I knew that something had to go.
It's April now, but actually December is the worst month for dust. Bet you already knew that. And why, you ask, as though you hadn't already figured it out. I think it's because of the almost horizontal sunlight at the winter solstice. Now that can be a wonderful thing: when it lit up a bowl of pears in the living room one year, I grabbed my camera and later painted the image. December Light: a good thing.
But December Light is a two-faced scoundrel. For example, it faithfully shows up at one of my rare pre-Christmas get-togethers with a few artist friends of long-standing, all of them good housekeepers. And for those inevitably grey days ahead of the event, I try to think like a dust mote and where I would hide. Even that morning, all looks well. The sun waits until everyone has arrived and then bursts in, like a rotten boyfriend you thought you had successfully banished. The air is revealed to be a kaleidoscope of dancing particles, the furniture reveals its hidden angles to be swathed with a century's worth of the stuff. Such shame. Everyone pretends not to be have noticed. But they know. They KNOW.
So I have decided to take a page from my friend Lyla's book: she considers dust to be a "protective coating." And I have to admit that it has come in handy when Jon and l have left notes for one another on the piano ("Put your reels away. NOW .") or on the dining room table ("When's dinner going to be ready?") Mr Dust and moi-meme: bffs.
So soon old, so late schmart.
It's April now, but actually December is the worst month for dust. Bet you already knew that. And why, you ask, as though you hadn't already figured it out. I think it's because of the almost horizontal sunlight at the winter solstice. Now that can be a wonderful thing: when it lit up a bowl of pears in the living room one year, I grabbed my camera and later painted the image. December Light: a good thing.
But December Light is a two-faced scoundrel. For example, it faithfully shows up at one of my rare pre-Christmas get-togethers with a few artist friends of long-standing, all of them good housekeepers. And for those inevitably grey days ahead of the event, I try to think like a dust mote and where I would hide. Even that morning, all looks well. The sun waits until everyone has arrived and then bursts in, like a rotten boyfriend you thought you had successfully banished. The air is revealed to be a kaleidoscope of dancing particles, the furniture reveals its hidden angles to be swathed with a century's worth of the stuff. Such shame. Everyone pretends not to be have noticed. But they know. They KNOW.
So I have decided to take a page from my friend Lyla's book: she considers dust to be a "protective coating." And I have to admit that it has come in handy when Jon and l have left notes for one another on the piano ("Put your reels away. NOW .") or on the dining room table ("When's dinner going to be ready?") Mr Dust and moi-meme: bffs.
So soon old, so late schmart.
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