thoughts inside my brain…

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the last few weeks have been a lot, and have given me much to think about.

one of my human clients, craig coenson, died. he was the husband of a couple who’ve been my clients consistently for 13 1/2 years, 5 days a week, pretty much since i began my pet business, dog walking and frequent overnight petsitting. so over the years i’ve become friends with both of them. it’s a friendship based in one particular context, sure, but in that many years we’ve seen a lot together – things that have happened both in the world and in our lives. it’s a certain kind of intimacy that is shared when you work in someone’s home and care for their beloved animal family member(s). so it was shocking and upsetting to me that he died so suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep one night. he was 63, very fit and vibrant, but did apparently have a heart condition. i guess it just gave out.

you just never know when your time is up. any day could be your last. accidents happen, or health issues – known or not, managed or not – can take us at any time. craig died way too young, too soon. i’m sure he had all kinds of plans for his future that won’t ever come to fruition now. i grieve his loss and feel so much empathy for his wife, kathy, and all of his family, friends and coworkers. he was very loved and will be missed.

his abrupt death has really made me take stock. as i wrote here in this blog not too long ago, i’ve already been far too aware of how quickly time is passing now that i’m older, that the days ahead of me are fewer than those behind me. but craig’s passing has been a reminder that no tomorrows are guaranteed. that you better do the things you want to do in your life sooner rather than later, and be sure to tell your people that you love them every chance you get.

this having happened is the backdrop to the next thing i’ll tell you about. a few days ago i went to a social/info session for jazzfest crafts artists. it’s something i became aware of last year as my friends debra and karen – karen is an amazing artist who has exhibited at jazzfest for many years – invited me to go, but last october i was on vacation in new mexico the exact week the social happened, so i missed it. luckily they invited me to go again this year, so i tagged along just to gather info and take a step in the direction of maybe someday applying to be a jazzfest crafts artist. it was definitely out of my comfort zone. but it was low key. i met a bunch of other artists, some who have sold at jazzfest before and some who are new and applying for the first time. the jazzfest crafts admin folks gave a little presentation and answered questions about the application process. so i now know a lot more than i did before about the nuts and bolts of applying and being selected to sell art at jazzfest. everyone there was very encouraging and friendly. i’m glad i pushed myself to go.

will i apply? i could… it would take a monumental amount of work to pull it together for this year though. applications are open now and the deadline is the 3rd of december. but probably not, not this year. one of the requirements is to submit a photo of what your booth would look like, with all your work in it. i do have some finished pieces but not enough to fill a booth, and none of them really look like they were made by the same person! i simply don’t have enough to give jurors an idea of who i am as an artist… which is sadly still something i am trying to figure out for myself.

i still haven’t really found my style or groove with abstract painting. every time i think i might be onto something, i change directions and want to do something different. do i want to paint solely abstract and focus on texture and color? do i want to do mixed media incorporating collage and/or found objects? do i want to do abstract folk art? do i want to paint on canvas? wood panels? paper? do i want to go back to silkscreen and/or stencil printing? work with the gelli plate? all of the above?? my adhd brain has me bouncing all over the place every single time i make it into the studio and i no sooner start working on one thing than i want to switch to something completely different.

all of this is a long way to say, i really don’t think i’m ready to apply to something like jazzfest. i just don’t have my shit together. most artists at least have some semblance of a style, a reason they create what they create, something they are known for – either a style or a subject matter or even a process. i have a hundred styles right now, none of which are refined or honed into any kind of consistency. i feel like i’m still in the make-a-lot-of-bad-art-until-it-starts-getting-better phase, and i still have a ways to go.

and yet, i can so clearly visualize it all, largely due to the fact that i used to be a crafts artist and did the art market scene to some extent with my stenciled stuff back in the post-katrina days. i can visualize completing the application, photographing my work, putting together a booth, and even the logistics of being out at jazzfest. i can visualize everything except the actual art that i would be selling. that’s the sticking point! so i guess i should just use this new knowledge about the application process as a way to motivate myself to work harder to get my shit together for next year. to keep making lots of art until it starts to make sense, until i start to understand what my motivation and style is. so i can articulate that. because that is part of the application… and part of being an artist.

so yeah. yesterday i finally got back into the studio. it’s been a while. life has gotten in the way and i’ve gotten very good at procrastinating/resisting creating, or really even stepping foot into my studio, lest i have to confront all these big thoughts. i spent much of the day in there, tidying, setting myself up, and painting. working on old stuff. working on new stuff. i have so many things in process/unfinished. it did feel good to be painting. but it also feels super frustrating to spend the whole day in there and not feel like i made any real progress on anything. sure, it was therapeutic to just play with paint. but if all i’m doing is playing with paint, performing art therapy on myself, then i probably should just give up this dream of being a successful artist one day and just be in the moment and enjoy what i’m doing. right?

that’s my struggle really. is all this – all the classes, the art supplies, the playing with paint, mixed media, gelli plates, etc. – going somewhere? is it my learning and gestating phase, before finally coming into my own as an artist where i am able to make an income again from my creativity, cover the cost of renting a larger studio, and cut back or quit the pet business? or is this it? am i just using the process of creating as part of my wellness routine? ideally the answer would be that it’s both. but it would alleviate a lot of self-imposed stress if i just let go of the hopes and dreams part of my art being the way i make my mark on the world and leave a legacy, or of it being my retirement plan.

sigh. sometimes i think those hopes and dreams are what keep me alive, keep me looking to the future, striving, continuing to be curious, give me purpose. sometimes i think they are holding me back, keeping me in a future that might not ever happen and preventing me from being here now and being fully present, enjoying every minute. do other people have these existential debates in their heads? other artists? or am i just an overthinker?

i woke up this morning really sad that i have such a busy work day that will keep me out of the house almost the entire day and into the evening. no time in the studio today. most of this week will be like that too. october is the start of busy season for the pet biz that won’t stop until january. so if i want studio time, i will have to steal it in 20-30 minute spurts in between clients or in the dark of early morning or evening, which generally is not when i like to create. (my studio is not well lit in the darkness, and being a leo, i am ruled by the sun so my energy is lower when it’s dark.) will i go another few weeks before i spend time in my studio again? i hope not but it’s a possibility. i just have to keep reminding myself that our tomorrows are not promised, so i should do what i want to do today while i’m still here. and if making art is really want i want to be doing, then i need to be doing it.

thanks for reading.

coming soon…

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i’ve decided to take the plunge and set up my own web store to sell my paintings, prints, stickers and whatever else i make. it will reside here on the “shop” page on the menu but isn’t live yet as i’m still setting it up.

i’ve taken all my stuff down from etsy. i just can’t support them any longer. the fees and percentage of sales they take is just so high considering i now have to do just as much work to promote my items as i would if they were here on my own site – meaning, etsy now basically charges makers to promote their items to their large audience and if you don’t pay, your stuff doesn’t come up as easily in the search engines. so someone basically has to go there knowing where to look for your stuff anyways – why not just send them here where it doesn’t cost me anything but my time to set up and maintain the store?

i will still have print-on-demand t-shirts and other apparel available through bonfire and some older designs through teespring (which is now just called spring but i still call it teespring).

hurricanes and political campaigns…

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time just keeps flying. why is it the older we get, time seems to move so much faster? i guess it’s because we’re more aware of the eventual end of our own personal timeclock, even though we don’t know exactly when that will be. we do know that there’s less time left on the clock than we’ve already experienced. and i don’t know about you, but that weighs on me every single day.

sigh. well here we are in mid september. i’ve survived yet another hurricane hitting new orleans, francine. it was really quite a minor hurricane, a cat 2 only momentarily so mostly a cat 1. and the whole southern side of the storm on the other side of the eye wall had no rain, just crazy winds. but those winds were enough to make my power go out at my house at 11:30pm on the night after most of the storm had passed, and the power stayed off for exactly 36 hours. long enough to melt all the ice i’d frozen beforehand in the freezer to help keep it cool; long enough to require me to spend $25 on ice trying to keep the freezer going and to fill up a cooler with the stuff from the fridge; long enough for all that ice to start melting and some of my food to go off, resulting in me getting really sick after eating a frozen pizza that had meat on it which i thought had remained frozen, but i guess not. yeah, that was no fun. i really hate throwing up! so now i’ve thrown out all the stuff that was perishable from my fridge and freezer cuz i don’t want to have that experience ever again. it was very unpleasant. and expensive, as i’d *just* done a $150 costco run the weekend before. oh well.

anyways, i thought i’d be happy to have a few days off work (wednesday, the day of the storm, and thursday, the cleanup day after when many still didn’t have power, including me) and that i’d get some painting done, but that didn’t happen. turns out sitting in my unairconditioned studio, even though the temps outside were pretty bearable, isn’t very motivating.

i never finished that last series of mixed media paintings i talked about in the last post. they’ve gone to the not-done pile that is almost overtaking my tiny studio space. but i started a new series, covering up 4 older 16” x 20” canvases that weren’t going anywhere. i decided to let the thing that’s been exciting and motivating me the past few months – politics – inspire me in the studio. last week before the storm i rather spur of the moment had some play time in my art journal – something i haven’t done in a really long time. what i came up with was a sort of deconstructed american flag.

i really hate the color combo of red, white and blue. i’ve always thought it quite garish. and i’ve recoiled from patriotism in any form since a child. i hated having to say the pledge of allegiance and often did not, even in elementary school. something about being forced to do so never sat right with me. so the democrats’ current effort to “reclaim” patriotism doesn’t really work for me, even though i have let myself get a bit swept up in the vibes of kamala’s campaign. but flag waving patriotism is not something i can get excited about. however i did decide that using the colors of red, white and blue and playing with the elements of the flag while adding one of the themes of kamala’s presidential campaign, “freedom,” might be a good art challenge.

i ended up really liking how it turned out and so thought, well, i have all these ugly canvases sitting around just waiting to be covered up – why not try to do a series of actual paintings based on this same concept? the thing that started it all was that i (re)discovered a bunch of protest signs i’d printed out on heavyweight paper in 2016 for various street demos against trump’s “winning” of the election that year. one of them said “democracy is dying, do something.” so i tore off the “do something” part, thinking of michelle obama’s dnc speech this year, and glued it down with gloss medium onto one of the canvases that i’d painted blue. and then i added some stripes, though i ended up not liking the original fatter stripes and went back and made skinnier, messier ones like i did in my art journal, which i’m still not super happy with but it’s closer to working. and i started adding all kinds and sizes of stars with the eventual goal of having 50 or maybe even 56 to include the territories.

i’ve added more since i took this picture but it gives you an idea of where i’m at with these. there are 4 canvases and the others use other slogans from the current presidential campaign like “hope is making a comeback,” “a new way forward,” and “joy.” but “do something” is the furthest along as it was the first i started and feels like it has the most energy to me.

i’m not really sure where any of these are going or if i’ll even finish them but it’s been a fun challenge to wrap my brain around. i spent some time this weekend creating my own collage papers with paint and then cutting out various sizes of stars to collage in on these canvases. i think that is working but i feel like the paint/background needs more layers so some will likely get covered up and i’ll have to make more. the composition is lacking something – maybe just some really big stars, not sure – but i keep playing with these whenever i have a little time.

(i still think red, white and blue is awful but it’s made a little less garish by layering and scraping several different shades of blue with grays and whites and creams for a more distressed look. these canvases have a lot of texture on them from underlying layers since they are cover-ups so that is helping.)

what else? i’m still in the art2life academy but haven’t really utilized much of its resources beyond the facebook group. not sure i should stay in it but every time i think about quitting i find some videos in the vault that i want to watch, so i don’t. nick sure is good at marketing! lol

louise fletcher’s free find your joy taster course came and went. i signed up for it just so i could get the emails with the video links and i watched some of them while painting but didn’t actively engage with her prompts. and had no interest in going through FYJ the full course a second time, despite the deep discount for alums. my year-long access to FYJ 2023 ends today so i spent some time last night downloading all the pdfs and copy/pasting some of the lesson info so i’d have a record of it if i ever want to go back to it. i like louise and will keep following her on youtube and her podcast art juice plus i get her newsletter but i don’t think i’ll be taking any more of her courses.

nick also had his free taster course breadcrumbs which i also signed up for but didn’t really engage with other than to listen in on some of the videos of live events. his free taster is the lead-up to the paid spark program which i did in 2022 and enjoyed but i have no interest in doing that again, especially when i still have access to all the CVP material that i really need to go back over again.

i have a stupid busy work week this week so not sure i’ll have much time in the studio. it’s always the challenge – how to make time to paint when what i do for a living is get paid to give my time to other peoples’ pets. i racked up a $750 emergency room bill from the fall i took in my backyard in july so i need to work as much as i can to make the money to pay that off, but it leaves me sad and pining for my studio time.

it being september i am already thinking about how to use the holiday shopping time as a way to sell some paintings but at the same time don’t feel like i have a lot i’m proud of and wanting to sell. last year’s “open studio” was fun and made me a little bit of cash but my house really isn’t set up for it and i don’t have the energy or the setup/supplies to do an art market, so not sure how i will do it. maybe some kind of online sale/drop is the best option for me. we’ll see.

that’s all for now. thanks for reading. i’ll write again when i feel like i have something to say.

summer…

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well the summer is zinging along at what feels like a rapid pace. cvp feels like a distant memory already, even though all the unfinished/in-process boards are still littering my studio – especially my final series boards. i’ve returned to them again and again and while i’ve decided to try to just keep pushing through on the designs i’ve got going right now instead of covering them up YET AGAIN, they are still not finished and i keep having to let them sit for a while in between passes. maybe one day they will resolve in a way that makes me happy.

but i’m not letting them bog me down. i’ve started working on a new series of 14″ x 14″ canvases. (i don’t know why this size other than that i had a 6 pack of them from the last sale i hit at michael’s and they just felt right.) i started off thinking this was going to be a sort of simple, minimalist, color-and-line-based series (which the first one kind of is), but as i have continued working on more of them in the series, they’ve gotten weirder and mixed media/collage has crept in.

here’s a sneak peek at the first two in the series – not sure they are done yet but this is where they stand right now. they are both untitled at the moment, though that may change. (not the best picture because of the glare, sorry!)

i’ve been inspired by many different artists i follow on instagram who work in a minimalist style with acrylic paint – some who focus on color, or who use limited palettes, or who feature line prominently. (too numerous to name them all.) but i’ve also recently got really excited about the mixed media work of bibby gignilliat who is part of the art2life extended family of artists and made an appearance last week on our cvp “art of business” bonus zoom webinar – her energy is infectious and i just love how free and joyous her work is. truly #goals. she makes a lot of her own collage papers and uses a lot of found paper and other scraps, which i relate to, as i am constantly picking up things that i find on my dog walking travels for future art use. she also uses more industrial materials like house paint and polyurethane in addition to acrylic paints. i love her use of color and bold lines. her work just looks like she’s having the time of her life making it!

so yeah, i’m not trying to emulate bibby’s work or that of any of the artists i follow on instagram, but i am inspired by them and i do get ideas from them. this series feels like a departure for me… but not really. but it’s definitely gelling better, quicker. i guess we’ll see where the series ends up but i’m liking these first two pieces so far even though i’m not quite sure they are done yet. the first one is acrylic paint, acrylic markers and pencil; the second one is acrylic paint, acrylic markers, homemade collage paper, and found library card and drywall mesh scrap. (the second canvas is also a cover-up of a previous painting attempt so the surface has some weird textures to it.)

stay tuned for the rest in the series. #3 and #4 are mid process and giving me some trouble. #5 has just been started and i just got an idea for #6. i want to finish all 6 and see what that feels like to have a full series to show y’all!

in other art news… after cvp ended i took the plunge and signed up for the academy (which includes the studio, the 24/7 zoom room available for art2life artists to connect and paint together). i did it knowing there was a 30 day money back guarantee, but thinking i’d probably pay for the first month or two to check it out and then decide if i wanted to stay. i’ve not really had time or inclination to dive very deep into the academy vaults or participate in a lot of the live zooms or the studio so far, and with my 30 days coming up soon, i almost convinced myself to quit it all together and get my money back.

but in the time it took for them return my email telling them i wanted my money back, i watched a few interviews on the academy site and realized there are a lot i’d like to see and that maybe i do need a month or two with the vaults… so i changed my mind and decided to not make any changes. i’ll continue for now and maybe pay for another month as a birthday present to myself (it’s $77/month so not cheap!) and then i’ll quit. unless of course all of sudden i get really prolific and start selling a lot of art so i can afford to just keep it!

i do really want to go back through the cvp material to focus on the stuff i didn’t really finish or digest well during the course, but i also feel that i should follow this rare spurt of inspiration that is making me excited to explore these mixed media pieces. i have a year to go back to the cvp stuff so there’s no rush. it feels so good to have something feeling like it’s flowing and that i actually like.

so that’s what’s up… for now. i’ll post again when i have something to say and/or show you.

the end of cvp… and onto the academy!

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this is not really a review or even wrap-up of the 12-week online class cvp (creative visionary program) but rather it is just my now what? kinda post. i think it’s gonna take me a while to be able to really assess how i feel about the overall program and how i did with it, because i’m still doing it. i got behind, skipped over a few assignments here and there, and have not finished my final series… so i still have a ways to go. life got in the way – well really, work got in the way, mostly. my pet biz has been really busy and i’ve had an uncharacteristic amount of overnight sitting, which i don’t really like doing but which is financially very lucrative so sometimes i say yes. but when i do it, i’m not really living at my house and therefore not able to spend time in my studio cuz i’m being paid to spend my time with clients’ pets. hopefully july will allow me to get back into my home studio groove. but all this is to say, i’ll do another post at a later date about how i feel about the class and my progress.

a few shots from my art instagram (@artbymagsdotcom) from the past few weeks

but yeah, cvp is over. last week was the last week of classes and the wrap-up call was this past tuesday. i have access to the materials until march of next year though, so i can go back over anything i haven’t finished or feel i need more work on. i haven’t really done that so much with the last class i took, find your joy, which i lose access to in august right before she offers her free class and the 2024 version of find your joy. but i don’t really feel i want to anymore. i think i’d rather keep the momentum i have going with art2life and cvp. like i feel like i’ve found my community that i vibe with. i tried fletcher’s community art tribe for a some months before i took find your joy and while i appreciate all that it offered (masterclasses in all kinds of things, group challenges, members’ studio tours, etc – just tons of content plus a facebook group), it seemed mostly based in the uk and europe and i just never felt quite like it fit me. art2life is based in california and while there are people from all over the world involved in all the art2life courses, for whatever reasons i just feel more at home in this community.

there is also a membership-type community with art2life like fletcher’s art tribe – it’s called the academy. but it’s only available to those who have gone through cvp, which somewhat limits the membership. (i think they said there’s about 1800 in it currently.) it’s sort of the next step, and a way to reinforce what we learned in cvp and also keep in touch with the coaches and community. and unlike cvp, where we did not get any one-on-one feedback other from the other cvp students – we are taught how to critique ourselves – in the academy you can get feedback from coaches on weekly calls. there’s also another perk called the studio (which can be done separately for a lower fee if you don’t want to be in the academy) where you basically can dial in to a 24/7 available zoom to paint with other artists, which i think is pretty cool. painting is a very solitary endeavor and it can get lonely; not everyone can afford a studio in a space with a lot of other artists, and not everyone lives in a city or area where there is a thriving artist community. so this offers a way to connect to and grow a community of other artists who are working with your same vocabulary about art, because we’ve all taken cvp.) nick wilton himself – the art guru at the helm of art2life – even makes appearances in the studio painting for hours on end with others.

i wasn’t initially thinking i’d sign up for the academy because i feel like i still have so much work to do to “finish” cvp but i went ahead and signed up today for at least one month and if i feel like it’s just too much or i won’t really use it or i’d just rather wait til next year, i can cancel within 30 days and get my money back. i mean, i do really love the idea of it and look forward to checking it out to see if i think it will help me stay focused, stay on track, and keep painting. but i also haven’t made much of a dent in the cost of cvp which i put on my paypal credit hoping to pay it off within 6 months to avoid financing charges – it’s due at the end of september. so adding another monthly art charge on top of all that i need to come up with to pay off cvp… well, it doesn’t seem smart. but hey, i didn’t know how i was gonna pay off find your joy either and i managed to do it without any financing fees. so maybe i’ll pull it off.

i just need to get painting, need to actually finish some things that i can put up for sale. because i did recently sell an abstract piece i made in 2023 on etsy. it was one of my favorite pieces i’ve ever made in an abstract style and i even submitted it last year to the art2life online art show. (it was not selected. but that just goes to prove that rejection from a juried show is not an indication of a piece’s worth.) so i know there is an audience out there for my abstract work. i just need to fight through the resistance i’m experiencing to actually finish.

hopefully july and august will be a bit kinder schedule-wise to my art endeavors. it’s such a hard balance, wanting to scale back the pet biz so i have more time for art but also needing the pet biz to not just pay my bills but also fund my art endeavors. but the pet biz takes me away (literally) from my art endeavors. this is the struggle i’ve been in for the past decade or so with my art, but i’m closer than i’ve ever been to figuring it out and i feel better armed with art knowledge than i’ve ever been. i just need to buckle down.

so that’s where i’m at right now. i will at some future point go into much greater detail about the cvp program itself and my experience with it, and now that i’ve signed up, i can also tell you more about the academy after i’ve experienced it for some time. but for now, i’m just trying to get through the rest of june and my heavy petsitting schedule. and hopefully get back to painting!

i made it to week 9 of cvp!

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we are in the homestretch now in the online art course i’m taking (cvp), in the middle of week 9 (out of 12). since i last posted here, we’ve covered a lot of color theory – color value, harmony, temperature, saturation, compliments, etc. – and had a week on texture. there was a “rest” week in there too, where we didn’t have any assignments and were supposed to either rest or use the time to get caught up. i did a little of both.

i wouldn’t say i’m entirely caught up with the course but i’ve muddled my way through it. i’ve watched all the lesson videos, done most of the lesson exercises, watched all the zoom coaching calls and done the exercises from those. i’ve even watched most of the bonus videos in the portal and gone through all the “helpful hints” pdfs – the written supplements to what we are taught in the lesson videos and coaching calls.

and i’ve done a pretty good job of painting in my journal regularly, not always daily but most days. i also began in my art journal, when we started the class, a daily gratitude practice, writing it down. and that i have done every single day since i started cvp. it’s how i start my day each morning while i’m drinking my coffee and/or eating my breakfast and i do really think it’s helped shift how i feel and start my days.

my first cvp journal is now full (the one on the left) so i’m starting a 2nd journal!

but what has fallen through the cracks is all the actual weekly assignment boards – usually for each week/principle we are supposed to paint 1-3 boards to integrate that knowledge into our painting practice. i did ok for the early weeks when we were working in black and white on value and contrast but once color was introduced, i got a little overwhelmed. i haven’t really “finished” any of those and some weeks i maybe only started one board instead of 2 or 3.

but it’s ok – i’ll go back to them. i’ve wanted to just keep moving along so i could keep up with the pace of the class and the live calls. but this also means i haven’t been participating as much in the social media/community portion of the class, at least for the last few weeks, since i haven’t had as much to share. (we have a class-specific social media forum on a platform/app called circle, so the course could be moved off of facebook. this is where we are supposed to be posting what we paint, sharing with the other students, offering feedback to each other, etc.) i’ve tried to keep posting on my instagram feed, mostly stuff from my art journal, and have found a handful of other cvp students on insta and we interact. but it’s not the same as participating on circle where all 3000+ of the cvp students are.

oh well. i think i’m doing pretty good considering i have a full time job and there’s been a lot going on to distract me, i.e. jazzfest. (you’d have to have no job/be retired and have no distractions for 12 weeks i think to have the time to do everything to completion in the weekly timeframes. it’s really a lot of information, which is why we have access to the materials/videos/portal for an entire year, so we can go back through whatever we missed.)

anyways, here we are in week 9 and for the rest of the weeks, we will be working on our final series of paintings. this week we are to start them, give them a first and maybe second pass. just get something going. play. experiment. we don’t need to know where it’s going or have a plan. so i jumped in and did so, on monday. i have 3 boards and a throwaway board (the one furthest away on the table in the pic below) that all have a first pass on them and they don’t even look awful! i actually kinda like some parts of what i have going on them!

(i’ve now done a second pass that i didn’t take a photo of, but this is where i started.)

last night i began a 7 day overnight pet sit for a geriatric dog and cat, so i won’t be at my house a lot and therefore won’t get to spend a lot of time in my studio for the next week. but this class has taught me that all i need is 20-30 minutes at a time… so maybe i’ll be able to keep working on these a little. and even if i can’t, i have at least done what i was supposed to do for week 9, and the sit ends on tuesday so i’ll still have time in week 10 to do the next step.

so yeah, that’s what’s going on. this week’s lessons have all been about process, understanding what the art2life/nick wilton process is for making intuitive abstract art. it may not end up being the best process for me or any one individual taking the class, but i am hoping it can be mine… at least for abstract work. i hope i’m absorbing it, because it’s all about being present, paying attention to what you like, what lights you up, gives you energy, makes you feel alive, and then infusing that into your work. and if i’m to be honest, i’ve spent much of my 40s and 50s not feeling very alive. on auto pilot. shut down. checked out. and my inability to make art that i like, that feels like me, has been the result. sure, i’ve had a few blips in there of inspiration, of connection, of feeling that flow of the universe… but it has been fleeting.

so the whole reason i took this class is because i knew it was more than just an art class. it’s kind of an art class mixed with a self-help/self-discovery woo-woo group experience, perfect for my midlife crisis. it’s teaching me how to use my art practice for self discovery, to find the me that’s been buried, while i still have time to explore and enjoy it. and when i do, the art i make will be an artifact of that journey.

i’ll leave you with this quote from this week’s lessons on process: “try to look at your art practice as a journey of healing and a way to stay present.” yes indeed.

stay tuned to see where my final series of paintings go!