Project 1
Acrylic, 610mm x 610mm
Most houses don't have a waiting room as such but the idea of "waiting" for something is definitely one which most people can resonate with.
Waiting for something can really play with your subjective sense of time passing. And why does time seem to speed up as we get older?. I recall my teenage years so clearly, when i was always waiting to be noticed or waiting to be a person who had got their act together. I didn't realise then how immensely lucky I was not to be waiting to get a good meal or safe passage to a country without war. Food for thought whilst you sit on a chair and look again at the time on your phone.
#11 the waiting room
Giclee Print
All prints are giclée quality – the best digital print technology available. Archival inks, cold press watercolour paper and colour correction by industry experts from Copyart, Richmond,. Your artwork will be checked and packed into a tube ready to be framed by you.
Limited edition full size print $300 inc p&p in NZ
One of a signed limited edition of 50
Printed area 610mm x 610mm with 20mm border
Original Available $1,800
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the waiting room
Christchurch 1998 Elinor
They had been married for just shy of fifty years. Denied a Golden Wedding Anniversary by William’s heart giving out. He had stayed up after she went to bed and later she found him in his chair, so pale he was grey and had been dead a while.
Elinor put the kettle on before ringing the ambulance service and then each of the children.
Her children worried she wouldn’t cope but Elinor found a strength she didn’t know she had until tested. Unlike some women of her generation she knew how to do the day to day banking, but when it came to investments that had been William’s department. She had never worried as he was a prudent man, and if he said that they had enough money to live on in retirement then she trusted him.
So when she met with the financial advisor it was a huge surprise to be told that she was an exceedingly rich widow. She was shocked into silence so the man carried on, explaining that after William’s father died in 1965 he had left everything to his only son. It amounted to about $500,000 and wisely invested the fund was now over eight million dollars.
The kindly receptionist made her a cup of tea and they gave her some time to sit with the news. She had that visceral shock reaction. Her mind raced through the many things he hadn’t told her and she now couldn’t ask. This went beyond being economical with the truth, he had lied about who he was since the day they met. He had said he was an orphan and she knew he lived in the house that had belonged to his parents, but he never said the family was rich.
Over the next few days all she did know for sure was that she didn’t want to tell anyone, including the children. He had been a good husband and she didn’t want to change the way people saw him when he had no way of explaining himself. He deserved dignity in death. She would take out enough money for business class flights to San Francisco and to bridge the gap between the value of her home in Christchurch and a very nice retirement village in Auckland. Three of the children and her grandchildren were there or not too far away. Seventy six wasn’t too late to have a new adventure. The rest of the money could stay invested and be a nice surprise for everyone after she went.
She smiled to herself in secret satisfaction. Wouldn’t they be surprised?