Sanctified

It may surprise people that only have come to know me only through the Media that I am, in fact, a Born Again Christian.  I accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour on October 13, 1998.  Additionally, in spite of my own duplicity and sinful nature, I regularly attend church services at a local Baptist church.

Today was "Sanctity of Life Sunday".

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth I sanctified thee" Jeremiah 1:5

It is my belief that God has sanctified every single person ever conceived including those who will never be born.

I first became pregnant at the age of 20. Both my husband at the time and I had no pre-existing medical conditions so as dramatic as I was at the age of 20 I must admit now that my first pregnancy was rather uneventful.  It was the usual nine months ending with a few hours of labor and a healthy baby girl.  A baby girl that sadly I lost custody of due to my mental instability and alcoholism.

When I became pregnant at the age of 30 things were much different.  I was unmarried and had recently received surgical treatment for Cervical Cancer and had been told it would leave me unable to conceive again.  Also, my baby's father had a major pre-existing condition.  He already had twins sons with Noonan Syndrome.

I found out I was pregnant on October 15, 1998 and I was devastated. 

After the initial shock of "Holy crap! I'm pregnant!" wore off I had an appointment with my Family Physician, who ironically, was the same Physician who had delivered the twins of my baby daddy's first wife.  He was clearly shaken by the experience he had with the twins and sat there in tears as he told me he couldn't live through another experience like that.  He referred me to U of M to an OB physician who specialized in High Risk Pregnancies.

Before I had my first appointment with my new OB doc we had to go through Genetic Counseling at U of M.  My baby's father and I went to the appointment where the counselor told us that it was highly likely that our baby would be born as bad off, if not worse off than the twins.  If 'the fetus' survived through to birth it would most likely have a serious heart condition, would be unable to eat and face a life of mental retardation and other various disabilities.  She explained our 'options' and took the liberty of scheduling me an appointment before it was 'too late'.

Knowing that my own Mother had a difficult pregnancy with me and was given the same 'options' and knowing she had the strength to choose to have me gave me the strength to go ahead with my pregnancy and leave the outcome up to God. (Thanks for that Mom! ♥)

By the time I was 16 weeks pregnant my window of opportunity for 'options' was rapidly closing. My OB doc was wonderful.  He told me normally at 16 weeks they ran some standard tests that would indicate risk of Downs Syndrome or other abnormalities but he felt given the circumstances of my previous decision he recommended that I not do that test and just continue working on the presumption that I was going to have a healthy baby but he would be prepared to deal with whatever medical needs came up during my labor and delivery.  He just wanted me to make it to 26 weeks to increase the babies chance of survival. It sounded like a good deal.

I went for an ultrasound at 20 weeks and I got up the nerve to ask the technician if she could tell what sex the baby was.  She said due to some conditions that could go along with having Noonan Syndrome she couldn't be quite sure but it looked like a girl and she saw no obvious presentations of Noonan Syndrome but couldn't rule it out as a possibility.

After I had the ultrasound all my coworkers and friends would ask "Do you know if you're having a boy or girl?" and I would say "They couldn't really tell for sure but it looks like a girl" then they would say "Well, it doesn't really matter if it's a boy or a girl as long as it's healthy" I'd smile and nod but inside I'd be screaming "What do you mean by that?!?!"  In my heart knowing that the majority of my friends felt that I should not have another disabled baby in addition to the disabled twins that I was already raising.

I went on "bed rest" shortly after that ultrasound because of preterm labor, my OB doc felt I needed to just rest and prepare myself for a new baby and avoid stress but really, I'm the cause of 99.9% of my stress so that really didn't help much.

Surprisingly, I made it to the 40th week of pregnancy.  Then the 41th week passed.  Then the 42nd week arrived.  Finally out of the blue my OB doc said it was time to do something.  From my office visit I went into the hospital.  The nurse told my baby's Father that I would be having a C-section the next morning so he went home to take care of the twins.  About two hours after he left Abigail was born naturally into a room filled with two OB surgeons, two Neonatal Specialist, two Pediatric Cardiologist, a team of Nurses and Residents...way more people than I had ever thought could fit into a hospital room.  After about 10 minutes the verdict was in, Abigail was fine.  She was in fact a healthy, 9 lbs, 10 oz baby without any presentations of Noonan Syndrome.  Needless to say I was relieved.

I'd like to say that I had some sense of confidence that I 'knew' she would be born healthy but the reality of the situation was I didn't.  I was scared to the depths of my bowels that she wasn't going to be healthy.

It was only through my faith in Jesus Christ that I was able to sustain my own health and sanity during that nine months.  The same faith that preserved my sanity when my disabled son, Ronnie, passed away in 2008 from complications of his having Noonan Syndrome.

It's easy for me now to say "I was accepting of whatever God was going to give me", it's difficult to speculate what life would be like otherwise.   But at the end of the day I'm grateful that Abigail is healthy, I'm thankful for the time I had with Ronnie and I'm hopeful to continue to have time with my son, Anthony.   Every day with my children is a blessing.   All these things are gifts from God and I'm grateful for them.

All I have to offer others in this position is my faith in knowing that God is truly in control of every human being from the moment of conception to the moment He calls them home.

This is my daughter, Abigail, she is now a healthy 12 year old... not because of the choice I made but because of God's ultimate divinity.

Apple

My friend, Tim Flannery, is an amazing artist who paints the most astonishing and bewildering Surreal and Pop Art paintings.  Tim also happens to have one of the most impressive studio spaces in downtown Ishpeming, Purple World Designs.

A few weeks ago Tim hosted the 3rd Annual Purple World Designs Art Show and I was honored to be one of the Artists invited to participate.

During the exhibition I needed to get a drink of water...ok, I was snooping around in the kitchen, whatever...and when I went to the sink I noticed a striking painting of four perfectly beautiful apples.  I have a personal connection with apples and I include them in a lot of my paintings so I was immediately smitten by this painting of apples.  I looked closer at it and I noticed that the simple, yet elegant, realist painting had been painted by my favorite Pop Artist, Tim Flannery.

Later, once I was home in bed drifting off to sleep, I thought about the painting of four apples.  I kept imagining in my head all the reasons Tim would chose to paint the four apples, what the four apples could possibly represent, all the secrets the apples would tell with each bite.  I fell asleep to dream that Tim agreed to tell me the secrets of his apples if I exchanged a secret with him, so... I handed him a perfectly beautiful red apple.  Then I woke up.

"Apple"
11"x14" Soft Pastels with Acetone Fixative
On Strathmore Cold Press Paper

Tis the Season

A lot of people have been asking me if I could make "Washington Street Holiday" available as a Christmas Cards and Coffee mugs again this year.  So I am.

You can find "Washington Street Holiday" Christmas Cards, Stamps, Mugs and other speciality items available for purchase in my Zazzle Store at http://www.zazzle.com/artbyapierce

Enjoy!
Angela

Art Lessons Learned

There are two parts to this blog, the "short story" and the "long story"

The short story goes like this...

I've decided that all future original paintings by me will be registered through FineArtRegistry.com  I will also be more than happy to provide a registration tag to current owners of my paintings.  If you own one of my paintings and would like me to do this for you please feel free to contact me.

The long story goes like this...

As a Self taught Artist I've not only had to teach myself how to paint but I also have had to learn some hard lessons on how the Art World works. 

The lessons I've learned recently have to do with Authentication, Attribution and Provenance.

In August of this year I was contacted by an Art Broker who had been approached to broker the sale of one of my paintings.  As we talked I started to have some serious concerns because, basically, I wasn't under the impression that the current owner of the painting in question had sold it.  I was pretty sure that he had not.  I asked the Broker to email me some photos and some other info on the painting and I contacted the current owner of the painting.  The current owner of the painting verified that he had not sold the original painting, and had no intention of selling it.  The email I received from the Broker showed a convincing fake reproduction but the dimensions of the canvas where not the same as my original painting.  Authentication lesson learned.

In September I received a phone call from a woman who was so incredibly happy that she had found on of my paintings for sale in a gallery in Minnesota.  I had no idea which painting she was talking about so I asked her to email me a photo of it.  It wasn't mine.  It looked like my style of pastel work, but it wasn't mine.  It had a signature that started with a big "A" followed by scribble, but it wasn't mine.  Attribution lesson learned.

In October the owner of the "Avian Blue" series contacted me about doing a touch up on one of the paintings that he had removed the frame from that the previous owner had placed on it.  The owner felt that due to the amount that he paid for the paintings he wanted to have the paintings appraised and insured prior to shipping them back to me for the touch up painting.  Working with the Appraiser he hired was an experience that I can only compare to as a combination of interviewing for my first real job and writing my own obituary.  I wasn't prepared for all the questions that he asked about the painting, exact dates of previous sales of the pieces, my personal health and a myriad of other questions about myself and the paintings.  Provenance lesson learned.

The fortunate part of living through the excruciatingly painful experience of the appraisal process was the conversation I had with the Appraiser after we had completed the formalities.  I told him my various tragedies with Authentication, Attribution and Provenance.  He told me that I could avoid most of those situations by using a service such as Fine Art Registry.

At this point in my career as an Artist I've become quite skeptical and jaded *sigh* sad, isn't it?  So I did a lot of research and investigating.  I also selected a few random artists who are using Fine Art Registry.  I was very satisfied with the feedback I received so I decided to sign up with them.  I have to say, the day after I signed up I was pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call from Theresa Frank who personally answered all my questions that I had emailed to Fine Art Registry.

I was very happy :)

Unfortunately, the next day I received another new email asking me to authenticate another faked reproduction but at least now I can see a way to minimize those types of events from occurring by registering my artwork through Fine Art Registry.



















"Avian Blue 1"
FAR® ID: 41738

Staying Outside of the Lines

Growing up, I was the youngest child of three.

My older brother and sister where both advanced students from an early age.  I'm sure my parents expected the same performance from me but the only thing I excelled in academically was the ability to disappoint everyone.

I started Kindergarten at the age of 4 and I really just couldn't get with the program.  I had the attention span of a gnat, and for the most part I've never really grown out of that character flaw.  But I think the most traumatic thing that I remember from Kindergarten was I didn't know how to color with crayons.  Ms. Foster, my Kindergarten teacher, had effectively become my first Art critic.  She reported to my parents that I was a failure at coloring with crayons.  I couldn't choose colors appropriately, or keep my strokes going in one direction and the worst offense...I couldn't stay in the lines!

One day my Mom sat me down with my older sister to tell me that if I didn't learn how to color that I wasn't going to be promoted into First grade.  I was flunking Kindergarten because I couldn't color with crayons!!!

My Mother gave my sister a Bozo coloring book and a box of crayons and she was to teach me how to color.  It was a long, tear filled day for everyone involved.  At the end of it I was convinced I was not only going to fail Kindergarten but I was also most likely mentally retarded and needed to be placed in a special education classroom.

Some how my Mother convinced Ms. Foster to promote me on into the First grade even though I really still couldn't render a crayoned color sheet to anyones satisfaction.

As life went on I eventually did learn how to color inside the lines but I realized all the fun is in staying on the outside....












"Autumn Leaves"

Melted crayons on Canvas.

Saying Goodbye to a Friend

Today wasn't the worst day of my life, but it was definitely in the top 50.

Today I had to face the fact that my large format printer aka "the Mangler" has officially died.

Over the past two years the Mangler and I been through a lot but she's always come through for me, up until last night.  Last night she mangled 40 feet of canvas, went offline and I haven't been able to resuscitate her in spite of working on her for the last 24 hours.

I'm incredible sad at the loss of this piece of equipment.

While I'm getting ready to order a replacement for the Mangler it's going to be a few days before it will arrive and I'll be set up to resume printing.  So in the meantime, I'm going to have to make all Hand Signed Limited Editions unavailable for purchase until I transition to a new printer.

Customized Prints are unaffected by this transition and are still available to purchase through my website ArtbyAPierce.com

Good things come and go like bad things.  *Sigh*

Goodbye Mangler ♥

Social Networking Changes

Yesterday when I signed into Facebook I was greeted with the same new look that everyone else saw...a status full of people who either hated the new facebook layout or people who loved it.

Another change that happened yesterday was Google+ opened up to everyone.

So amongst all the "I hate the fb changes/ I love the fb changes" posts there where many people posting that they were now switching over to Google+ or going to Twitter only.  I can't blame them, I know Social Networking is a lot to keep up with.

Over the past year I've cocooned myself away from Social Networking as I haven't had the strength to keep up with all the private messages and emails.  I feel really bad about that because I haven't really made myself accessible publicly and by not answering private messages I seem sort of Anti-social.

I'm working on changing that.

Yesterday I made my Google+ profile "Public" so everything I post will be viewable by everyone. 

I will also be making all future Facebook posts on my personal page "Public" in addition to my Facebook Fan Page where you can find info specific to my Artwork.

I've also changed a few personal practices.  I had once blogged that I would never have a Twitter account.  Well, I started new Twitter and Linkedin accounts that are "Public". 

Also, I use to have a personal policy of not publicly commenting on blogs or articles.  I'm changing that too.  With all these "Public" social network accounts I'm recognizing that the best place to comment on any particular item is actually the Point of Origin, not facebook or twitter, but the actual blog post itself.

And in recognizing that, I also have to recognize that others should be allowed to comment on my blog if they feel inclined to do so, so I'm enabling comments on here now too.

I do still have "Contact" pages on my websites too but I can't make any guarantees that messages that aren't Order related will be answered in a timely fashion since I get pretty overwhelmed with just the order related stuff most days but I will try to do better about answering each non-order related email personally from this date forward.

So please feel free to add me, follow me, circle me, link me, comment me, etc.

I truly do look forward to hearing from you :)

♥♥♥
Angela