The time I need is my past! As a child I must have spent lots of time drawing and applying paint to paper but, as far as I remember, I wasn’t given any encouragement in that direction.

I was a well-behaved child who hated getting into trouble so I applied myself in all my lessons so that all my report cards were ‘good’. ‘Art’ wasn’t an important part of the curriculum in any of the schools I went to – and I went to more than my fair share of elementary schools for one reason or another (just read my earlier posts to find out those reasons!). And Junior High and High Schools weren’t really geared towards Art, either.

Then we came to England. There was an art teacher at Central High called Mr Abramowitz. I’m sure he was a good teacher but I don’t remember having even one art lesson at that school – it must have been one of those subjects that students choose to do. I chose to do Typing with Mr Wernette – maybe that was when I could have been doing Art. Sadly, at 15, 16 and 17 I hadn’t any inclination to learn drawing or painting – as I said before in other posts, I was only interested in BOYS!

Time sped through my later teenage years, then I was into my 20’s and a single mother (although I did have loads of help from Judy, Jennie and Patty!) ‘Veronica’ was very interested in drawing from the moment she could hold a crayon or pencil. We still have a notebook full of her drawings of, mainly, ‘toast people’. She was interested in drawing and painting but even more interested in words. Somewhere I have a diary in which I noted all the words she could say before she was two. She went on to read and study – but didn’t pursue painting, though she is now Dean of the School of Art at a University in the south of England!

I, on the other hand, went on from my twenties to my thirties and from there, to my forties. In my fifties, I suddenly had a desire to paint so I went to classes held once a week in the evening. There I learned to put brush to paper or canvas, spent some time learning to draw – and then packed it all in because I had a new baby grand-daughter to devote myself to! I would occasionally bring out the oils and brushes but seldom spent much time on painting.

My fifties sped by, and my sixties raced past as well! Late in my sixties or early in my seventies, I once again went to painting classes – this time at the local adult education centre. After a couple of years I got fed up with trying to paint ‘real’ things – I had decided I wanted to make abstract paintings, so I gave up the classes and set myself up with an easel in a corner of Julian’s studio. I painted most days. If I liked a painting, I’d keep it and show it to Angela, my mother-in-law who was an art teacher and who was always helpful when criticising my work. It surprised me that she found my paintings interesting and this spurred me on to trying all sorts of ideas.

But, Angela became ill and died in the winter of 2018 and I stopped painting so much. In fact, though I wanted to paint I couldn’t find any inspiration. Then along came covid.

After the first couple of lockdowns when I made no art at all, I was very happy to see that there were some online art classes run by Kent’s adult education department. My first online course was mixed media. It was quite a short course but we were given some really interesting ideas to try out. One of the ideas was to make a small book by folding and cutting an A3 piece of paper which gave us 8 pages which we had to fill with all sorts of interesting arty things. When that class ended, I spent a few months trying out various ideas, then decided I really needed a painting class. When the lists for September-starting classes was published, I looked at the classes which concentrated on oil painting and decided on one of many.

It started on a Wednesday at noon. The other members of our online course all already knew our tutor; I was the odd one out. I think I learned a lot from the tutor but I really wanted to work on abstract painting and, the tutor knew it. Last year he decided to offer an abstract course in the spring term. I imagine I was the first person to sign up to it, but I carried on with the other course as well for another term or two.

Now I just do the online abstract course which has been great! I’m coming up to the end of this term and have learned a great deal about the first abstract painters and the reasons they had for being different; about colour theory; about starting points; about themes. I’ve been introduced to painters I had never heard of and have seen so much work I wish I had made!

And I know there is so much more to learn and to see and I know that I just don’t have the time to find my style and take my place in the line of abstract painters. At 80 and with arthritis, I know that, even if I have 10 more years, that won’t be enough to make up for all the learning and looking and painting that I didn’t do when I was young.

Thank goodness for the internet! At least I can see some of the wonderful paintings made by other artists even if I can’t see them in person.

This is why I need my youth back – or, perhaps reincarnation is true, in which case, maybe I’ll spend my next life painting!

Note: ‘Veronica’ is the pseudonym I have given my daughter.