Juggling roles – life, motherhood, art and the hiatus that wasn’t.

The joy of a personal blog is that you can do as you please – change your mind or go off at a tangent. A comment to ‘Different times, different media’ caused me to stop and reflect. I realised that I had left out quite a bit. So, instead of the topic I had in mind, I’d like to expand on the hiatus that, in fact, was hardly a hiatus at all.

Sure, I didn’t do much painting but it’s not as though I stopped. During the years the children were growing up I did a short spell of high school relief teaching - English and History. Then, surprisingly, a year of teaching Grade 2 children. Today the thought of teaching thirty children aged between seven and eight fills me with quiet horror.

Over a period of about twelve years, also on my list were illustrations for a series of Children’s school readers. For a year I gave private art classes. I made mosaic designs for swimming pools and school badges. Somehow this segued into the design and construction of garden water features and a garden landscaping business. In fact, on remembering all these activities, I feel quite exhausted. I’m surprised I found time to bring up the children – fortunately they seem to have turned out just fine.

Life has a way of happening rather than one being able to follow a specific plan. In fact, often plans have to be abandoned, when something else takes you down a new pathway. All these things I have done make for a very interesting life – I can’t say I have ever had time to be bored.

Eventually I decided that I’d had enough of other stuff and was going to paint full time.

But, oops, I landed up instead buying a retail business. I have learnt such a lot about business, developed unexpected skills, and met such interesting people. It’s twelve years later and once again the new/old plan is being revived. Finally, perhaps, I am now ready to be a painter and to teach, something I trained for years ago.