Art is Life

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

Aside 1.2 : Art is Life

I knew about the life drawing session at the Palo Alto Art Center since high school.  My art teacher tried to push us all to go, especially since most of us wanted to be comic book artists.  The session has been running since the late 1960s and a staple in the San Francisco Peninsula art scene.  Post college, upon my return to the SF Bay Area, a friend tried to get me to go.  I came up with all kinds of excuses not to go.  When my marriage started to fail, another friend at work finally convinced me to go to one of the quarterly drawing marathons.  This was the break through, which brought me to the weekly Tuesday night group.  A group that has helped me come back to myself.  Now I go every week and book the models.

I Found My Heart

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

2.5 : I Found My Heart

San Francisco is said to be a magical place.   For me, it is a place of renewal.  I have lived in Los Angeles, Portland, and other cities around the west coast.  San Francisco renews me, energizes me.  There are times I feel the city by the bay is done with me and I am done with it.  Then something happens.  In this case it helped open my eyes to what I had imprisoned within myself -- the ability to connect, desire to have a partner once again in my life.  Nothing comes without a price, of course.  The pain experienced, still experiencing, is deep.  This feeling is important.  Pain is the price of living.  Working with it, through it, will make me grow, as I learn more about myself.  I don't want to go back to where I was before.  Before I wasn't looking or open to connecting with another human being.  People were hurt along the journey, outside of myself.  This is something I will carry with me and wish hadn't happened.  I do not regret where it has brought me -- back to the eyes of the child seeing San Francisco for the first time.