california

It took me a few weeks to finish up a bunch of my paintings.  It took a day to take a trip to the Omega Framing factory in Yaphank, where I selected and purchased my frame lengths.  It took a few hours in my garage to cut and assemble frames for all of my paintings. It took thirty something hours to build crates for all of my paintings, and pack the crates with all of my work. It took a while for my father in law and I to shrink wrap all of the crates on a shipping palette, and load it in to the back of a tractor trailer.  It took my wife Margaret a day on the computer to design a new portrait brochure, and have it shipped to Los Altos.

I’m delivering a big painting to a fellow who already purchased. In front of me is a couple days of exhibiting in Los Altos at the outdoor art fair, followed by a portrait demo at Los Altos Presbyterian. I’ll be locking in a large commission, which I’m able to paint back at my studio in Islip, and months later send back to the west coast.

The kids are asleep in the back of the shuttle, en route to the airport.  The paintings arrived safely in Los Altos.  The portrait brochures are printed, and awaiting us too.

And my wife is understandable asking me to get off my phone, because we’re sitting in traffic, near the Manhattan midtown tunnel.

If for a moment, I dwell on how much work it is to pull off an exhibition in California, I just think about Lewis and Clark taking a couple of years to make it from the east coast to the Continental Divide. And then, I tell myself to quit whining, in just hours I’ll be on my friend’s back porch in Los Altos.

Life is good.