"Satisfaction"
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I know this old guy who's always saying "I love work.  I could watch it all day long."  I kind of think that in this day and age, an information age when most of us go to an office and push ones and zeros around a screen all day long, many have forgotten what true labor is.  When it comes to actual labor, the kind where you get your hands dirty, dust is stuck to your sweat and you sleep well at night, that it's  become something of the past.  I'm a firm believer in the cleansing effects of work that makes you sweat and appreciate the opportunity I have every once in a while of stepping away from the canvas to do something dirty.
     A couple of hundred years ago art made a shift where artists started painting fewer of the aristocracy and choosing to paint the "noble peasant or farmer".  I don't know if the peasant felt all that noble but the people buying the art definitely had a way of romanticising the peasants role in society.
     I think it is much the same today.  Few enough people labor for a living that the idea or memory of labor can often generate feelings of nostalgia for a bygone era.  What does it mean?  I don't know.
    But in an effort to remind myself that there still are people who work hard and sleep without the use of medication I'm going to paint a dozen or so pieces dedicated to those "noble" few.
     So,  why the teacher?  My wife, Kay, teaches first grade and she insists that nobody works harder then she and her compatriots, and she insisted I do a teacher first.  And who am I to say she doesn't.  However, the next piece will probably be a coal miner.