Family Medical Leave from art?

Few folks know my Dad had a turn in health in December and now here it is June 7. Time crawls when a diagnosis can't be nailed down clearly...and flies toward my sister's wedding date (July 9). I am of that age group that has aging parents and that is all there is too it. What was simple becomes more complex...I had to stop ignoring the phone during my work hours. Dad has had two serious health crises that required hospitalization and the establishment of a team of specialists.

One of his symptoms was rapidly deteriorating mental status~ dementia ~ that did largely reverse with the right medical treatment. I felt strongly this was not Alzheimer's...there is no family history, he had a sudden onset of symptoms and a very rapid progression. In December he was sometimes confused, by mid-March he woke and had deteriorated so severely he could not speak, his body overtaken by severe tremors. A hospital admit at that point was absolutely essential and someone finally asked the right questions and got the right answers to those questions. He was treated for hepatic encephalopathy and over the next several weeks his symptoms faded. In May he developed an internal bleed that also took a few days hospitalization to nail down.

Over the months I repeatedly asked myself if my close following of my parents' health was necessary...and each time the answer was yes. I would have taken family medical leave or some other time off from any other job and I felt strongly something was being overlooked. My sister had a major surgery this Spring and there is just the two of us. Being self-employed I have a flexibility she does not when teaching. It is just near impossible to take a leave from your own business without destroying all that has been built. And now Dad is more stable it is time to focus on Broad Brook Art...but I believe there is a degenerating condition underlying these health crises and it may pull us all in again sooner than later. Everything is fine...until it isn't.

Night Landscape#1 in metallic acrylics

NL #3 in metallic paint

Night Landscape #2 in pastel

So I have been painting night landscapes with Lumiere acrylics. Despite knowing the paint's metallic appearance can't be duplicated online or in giclee prints. I just wanted to do SOMETHING. I wondered if I would be better off with pastel to get what I was looking for...so on to pastels for a moment. They also come in metallic shimmery shades, but I don't have a huge selection.

 For me the paint transforms the color in a different way and building layers comes easily. I started on night landscapes when we stayed in North Truro on Cape Cod. The beach grasses and fences shoring up the dunes  catch what little light there is, highlighted an instant at a time by the Highland Light lighthouse. Then the sweeping light is gone and in fills the void with a sparkling darkness that is the ocean. I love walking there at all times of the day, but the night sometimes seems mine alone.

Here our night landscape is starting to be transformed by fireflies. I am going to try and video some of that this year. I have never found a good way to make art from all those moving, searching points of light but this time of year marks when I first fell in love with landscape in the night.

Lots O' Speculation/ Reflection...big words for not so much. In the meantime I made myself finish this: 

Fawn Moon                     color pencil

I am pretty sure I won't stop at the four seasons...Rabbit Moon is summer, Crow Moon is autumn, Fawn Moon is RIGHT NOW Spring. Now my fox hunting on moonlit snow needs final touches.

Back to work...the fight is not allowing every day dramas to drag me away from artmaking.