Last week I read a wonderful tribute to marriage and art on Connie and Randy Coita's website, Studio Abbellire, http://studioabbellire.com/blog/?p=444, as well as a stunning post of her latest project, a trompe l'oeil Luna moth on a lichen covered panel. Connie is a gifted painter, and her husband Randy is a fine painter as well.
Randy writes that like the Luna Moth, we artists often start our lives at night and work until dawn. Yeah, I know, it takes a very understanding partner and no other obligations (i.e. kids) to do this very often, or at all. It's a very uneasy balance with doing art and doing the mother, wife and worker bee at the same time. I've been there, and like many women, I felt I was pulled in too many directions to be good at any role.
But, if your life has evolved into a situation where you can work into the night, it is the most peaceful and focused time to do it. No meals to prepare, no bank accounts to balance, no kids to soccer. Like the actual Luna moth I encountered on our screen door one humid night in Georgia, you have time and space just to be.....to fan out your creative wings and make beauty. For an artist, it's the gift of a quiet time to create in your mind , on a canvas, or to connect the lights of fireflies in the night.
I have loved the Luna moth since I was a little girl and my mother gave me "Girl of the Limberlost" to read by Gene Porter. Mr. Porter wrote of many lovely things, but the Luna was a repeated icon in his book. If there is ever a tender, evanescent testimony to the beauty of the natural world, it is this exquisite moth.
My painted image of the Luna is from a chinoiserie room I did for a client. Here's a wall of that room. Like Waldo, the moth is hiding with a lot of flora and fauna. Can you find her?
And thanks, Connie and Randy, for sharing your vision of "a little night music."
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