I have been so happy in my new house that I have been hard pressed to find a reason to leave it. On the one hand, great to love you environs, but on the other, it is good to get out and mingle with the rest of the world on occasion.
So I am particularly happy that some friends driving by my house called and offered to take me to see Stan Fellows' art showing. He is an immensely talented artist, and he has recently moved to a rural setting in River Junction, where he has gotten a lot of the inspiration for his recent paintings.
I mentioned to Stan that I didn't get out much these days, and he laughed and said the same charge could be leveled at him--he doesn't even have to leave home to work, and he has no more neighbors than I do (although I did see someone walk by his living room window while I was there, and that has not happened at my house).
What is his solution? He paints at Hope House, a place where patients and their families can stay while they are getting cancer treatment at the hospital. He says it is a win-win for everyone. The patients love to watch him work, and talk with him about everything you can imagine. He gets regularly scheduled time to paint, and lots of feedback on his work.
People who are diagnosed with serious life altering illness find that lots of their friends and family tend to pull away from them. Consciously people do not think that these illnesses are contagious, but a natural reaction is avoid contact with people who are undergoing things that are too painful for one to deal with. So besides having a scary illness, you are isolated and all alone. Stan is not only a great painter, but he is counterbalancing that phenomenon. He is choosing to enter people's lives when they are sick, and he is providing entertainment, comfort, and beauty, all in one fell swoop. Check out Stan's blog (click on the title to get to it) and see what wonderthings he is painting
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