revealing rest

What do you do once the big reveal is over? How do you maintain the momentum? How do you manage expectations, from both the self and from outsiders?

These are the things I’m pondering this week as I update my sketches and works in progress. There’s been a flurry of new ideas of late, and I’m working on developing each of them. Trying to stay present in the process, rather than worrying over meeting arbitrary deadlines.

Right now my biggest concern is whether I’m avoiding the painting when I should be painting. I have several work-ups ready to begin in paints, and yet I stare at the white canvas, unready to commit. At first I thought that I hadn’t fully developed my ideas yet. That I needed more iterations, more hacking away in oil pastels. But the more I worked the ideas in pastels, the further from the truth they felt. So…I’ve let them rest. I’m letting the canvas rest. Letting the colors rest and swirl in my mind, waiting. I’m close, I can feel the paintings waking up.

It’s almost time.

And good thing, too. Because the ideas just keep coming. Trying to sort out how to group, how to make sense, how to work with the explosion of concepts that need and want to make their way out into existence.

Today was a good day for ideas. Hopefully soon, it’ll be a good day to paint.

Birthday gifts

Nothing like another year around the sun to get you thinking about your priorities. This year, I turned 42. According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer to “life, the universe, and everything” and while I don’t know that I can live up to such weighty responsibilities, it’s given me perspective regardless.

I’m determined to make this a meaningful year. Expanding on my art, pushing my comfort zone to see what’s possible, developing new community, and exploring ways to enlarge my current relationships all take priority this year.

In previous years, I’ve embraced a single word to hold onto as a talisman and guiding star for the year. One of the best words I chose, with the most success, was the year of “YES.” This year, I’m picking the number 42.

Now if only someone would fix up a batch of pan-galactic gargle blasters to celebrate!

braving the web

The idea of building a website to share my art has felt intimidating as fuck. Who am I to be sharing my art so boldly and with such audacity? Is my art even worth the time and expense? These have all been questions I’ve pondered as I set about building this space.

And really, in the end, it doesn’t matter whether the art is “good” or whether people like it. What matters is that I’m proud of what I’m creating here. And I want to share it. Pushing myself to put my art out in places where more people can see it encourages me to grow my talents, develop my ideas, and really think about what it is I’m trying to accomplish in my paintings.

If I’m too afraid to share it, to grow, to learn, then why create?

Hopefully this space will help me improve as an artist, and find community with those who enjoy art.

Trust The Process

I’ve wanted to paint for years. Big paintings. Enormous paintings, even. Having been fascinated by Jackson Pollock ever since I was a kid, I first began to toy with the idea of creating my own work when I started following Belinda Rogers, an Australian artist. Getting an intimate look at her creative process allowed me to feel like creating art was possible. Her work with colors inspires deep emotional responses in the viewer, and I’ve been in love with her art from day one.

Financial realities of being a very broke freelance writer (and single parent) meant that those big canvases remained very far out of reach. Painting felt like a distant mirage, one that I could dream about, but never actually reach. Until the day I realized that in fact, I did have access to an enormous canvas. A gigantic one even!

I live in a nondescript white ranch-style house, built in the 1950s in a little town on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. The house faces a quiet road in a neighborhood that edges rural on the outskirts of town. The back of the house faces a small bit of woods, no neighbors, and no prying eyes. With that in mind, I went to work sanding down, filling, and priming a long swathe of that back-facing exterior. And presto, a canvas to get me started.

Who says you can’t paint wildly on your own home? The woods certainly don’t mind the splashes of color. Sometimes you just have to do the thing, others’ opinions be damned.