the chairs she named after her Grandmother’s sisters. We wish they could talk, too, Monique. In this exuberant home we see fearless use of color. Again, a theme I call “follow your heart” decorating. Buy what you love – unapologetically. Your home IS your altar, the proclamation of your tenacity and of true faith – in life. Was it Picasso who said “artists live out loud?” Live like you mean it.
I was as glad for a new year as anyone. But I experienced a weird phenomenon: there was a deep sadness, too. I felt like I was leaving someone behind. My younger brother died unexpectedly in his sleep eight months ago. Somehow acknowledging the passing of the year felt as though I was abandoning him. I had to say goodbye all over again. Yet I had not thought of that or felt that way on the new year following either of my parents deaths; had not felt like I was leaving them…what was that? I dreamt of Ward on New Years eve, we said goodbye with love and affection, and some type of awareness that this was it for us. I don’t feel his spirit around me anymore.
I have come to appreciate the gift of grief, not to recoil from it. I appreciate my anger. Surely any healing requires acceptance of the full range of our emotion. Gratitude waits on the other side of allowing for it all. I’m so grateful he was my brother.
What has this got to do with decoration? If you haven’t gleaned a theme in this blog yet, it is the fact that I do not know how to separate interior design from interior experience…it’s all the same for me, as within, so without…I FEEL colors. I feel everything. I absolutely GIVE UP trying not to. Because at nearly 70 years of age, I utterly and completely give up trying to be anything other than who I am.
AND – here’s the thing: I just want to grow up. I want to mature spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I want to heal this year, finally, from a lifetime in survival mode. From multi-generational abuse and mental illness, and from living defensively. I’m finally willing to be vulnerable. And the fact is, probably much like you, I have been on a lifelong search for truth, for the cure for this human condition, for “enlightenment” (deliver me.) I want nothing to do with that quest any longer. It holds no value. We both know it’s an INTERIOR issue.
Instead I will seek joy. In every little nook and cranny. I will sing at the top of my lungs off key! I will paint anything that stands still long enough – any color I feel. I might even name my furniture. I want to be warm and cozy and fat and sassy (so far, so good…) I will not abide beige.
My sweet brother never had a chance at any quality of life or happiness. But that’s a story for another time and place. Meanwhile I will not back down from living my life as an artist, in full living color.
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” – May Sarton
A Painterly Home 
Love this!
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