When you are unprepared for your dream to come true

When you are unprepared for your dream to come true

Artistically, I’m still on stealth projects. I hope to have something to show you soon, but I won’t know if it turns out until a little later in the game.

The big excitement this week was my own stupidity.

Back in September I got word that my painting, “The Turn”, had been accepted into the Northwest Watercolor Society annual Waterworks Exhibition (members only.) This is a BIG DEAL! Getting into Watercolor Society of Oregon (WSO) is a big deal. This is REALLY BIG DEAL!

I was on vacation at the time, so I celebrated, but didn’t do much else (Foolish Action #1.) A few days later I got a phone call (still on vacation) asking if I had received the acceptance packet… because the first thing I should have done was not celebrate, but let them know I got it! I apologized and assured the beleaguered show chair that I had indeed received the packet, I was very excited, and my painting would be coming.

Then, Foolish Action #2 happened. I got distracted. Vacation, the WSO show, the Paint the Town show. My attention, never great, just kind of went away. But after the WSO show, I sat down and read over the packet.

I was in trouble.

I had to buy a frame and the shipping time for that is usually about 10 days. That put me beyond the “shipped paintings must be delivered by” date.

Foolish Action #3: I decided to “save” money and drive the painting up to Seattle. This WOULD be a savings because I would be able to get a less expensive frame and would not have to pay for shipping (just shipping coming back.)

There is some possibility that this decision would have been okay, but I forgot another part of the equation. It’s (effectively) monsoon season in the Pacific Northwest.

Seattle traffic is ugly, though Portland is getting bad too. Plus, Seattle planners seem to have a moral objection to “through” lanes, so in addition to making the current turns, you have to be very careful about what lane you are in. Add torrential downpour to the equation, and I white-knuckled large portions of the trip.

But my painting go there, and NWWS posted the following montage on Facebook, so I know it’s been hung.

When I dropped off my painting, many of the paintings were out, but not hung. It’s not very good manners to look at a show before it’s been hung, but my quick glimpses shows the paintings were amazing. I’m not being modest when I saw that I wonder if my painting (however sharp it looks in its new frame) was included as some kind of mistake.

But it’s up now and I’m going to go with it.

Anyone wanna play hooky and go back up to Seattle Thursday for the reception?