Week 9 - Why do I Avoid Doing the Thing I Love?
Why do I Avoid Doing the Thing I Love?
I love to paint, draw, create. So why do I avoid doing the thing I love? Why do I resist going into the studio some days? Why do I leave the best for last?
Perfectionism. Getting it right can be a heavy burden, it can gnaw away at the creative spirit. On days like this, I need to remind myself that failure is crucial to the creative process. If I don't make mistakes, I'm not learning, moving forward. Besides, I can always re-do.
Self judgement. When people ask what I do, I say, "Im an Artist". It wasn't always like that. The imposter syndrome was thick and heavy in the early days. When was the tipping point? I don't recall, but the assurance of my self belief can be fragile. Keeping a lid on how much time I spend on social media is important.
Sometimes my head rules my heart. On those days, I need to drop the logical for the creative spirit... for joy.
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Printing Prints
This week I've been spending time developing a new series of fine art prints for the gallery. This involves picking photos of recent paintings, colour tweaking in Photoshop, and printing in studio on my Epson colour printer. This printer is fabulous! It produces top quality, archival colour prints on a variety of different substrates. It's a real workhorse that has paid for itself over and over for years. This printer must be getting close to 10 years old. Ten years of prints and cards.
This year I'm pushing the envelope, I'm going to include some of my digitally produced sketches and paintings in the mix. This artwork is created entirely in Procreate on my iPad. It's digital playing. And we know all work and no play ain't good...
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Acrylic Workshop
Check out my May 4,5,6, 2023 Acrylic workshop at the Chester Art Centre, in Chester, NS. These workshops fill up quickly, so don't delay if you want to join us. See link below.
https://www.chesterartcentre.ca/services-1/expressive-landscape
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Mila
Without your health you have nothing. As an artist I come in contact with a lot of substances that are, let's face it, bad for your general health. This week I did something to help balance that. I bought a Mila air purifier for my art studio. (This is not a sponsorship, just my personal opinion). Well, I'm amazed at this thing. Not only does it look great, it cleans the air of particles and nasty sh#t. An App is available, of course... The info you get back via the App is amazing. Humidity, temperature of the room as well as room AQI. I had two Air Quality VOC Alerts. These were two days of heavy, in to it, acrylic painting. The VOC was within "ok ish" levels. Mila cleared it out within an hour of stopping work on my painting. An audible alarm warns me via my iPhone if levels are rising. I now feel I can breath a little easier in the studio.
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Well said. Pretty much sums it up. The way I put it to myself is that to create, a person needs to be comfortable being uncomfortable. In any creative endeavor there’s often time spent fumbling and noodling around until something interesting happens. So sometimes, as a creative person, I can start to think “I suck”. So the trick is to be comfortable sucking until I don’t suck anymore. Of course “I suck” is a useless phrase since it implies I’ll never be any good. A more productive question would be, is this what I want to express? If the answer is no then the next relative question is, well then what does it need? It may still suck but this set of questions implies that I can do something about it. I think that to create one needs to be vulnerable to failure. If I procrastinate it is because I am more comfortable doing nothing than risking failure at something I care about in the deepest part of my uncensored heart.
I truly love this place, always my first stop when staying in Lunenburg. Always leave with a little piece or two,
Such great people, :)