Trying to see into the future is hard. Living in the past is even harder. I've been cleaning and sorting the art studio and working on de-cluttering my life in other ways lately. Cleaning my working space has lead to reflection and looking back over my past artwork and deciding how I want to move into the future - What skills to keep perfecting, what skills to add, and what to set aside for now, and what to just let go of altogether. This is not an easy task!
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| 2020 is going to be a great year to de-clutter and de-stress |
After 4+ decades of being 'an artist', I can see now that most of the best work I did in the past, even commissioned work, was not forced or done on a schedule. The older I get the less I want to even try to make art on a schedule, and the more I feel I should spend time with it, sometimes just sitting with it and even sometimes to just walk away from it for a day, or a week, and check back on it occasionally while I wait for it to 'feel right' and 'just happen'.
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| 4x4" acrylic dog portrait |
As an artist, inspiration often just pops into my head (literally, I can see things I want to make in 3-D in my head) but manifesting the actual art it in a physical form is not always easy or straightforward, and I often get frustrated and blame myself when things don't turn out as planned. My head and my art studio are full of abandoned or just unmade art projects. If I had only realized, many years ago, that I needed to do more meditation and less flailing about, and that I should spend more time looking and feeling, and waste less energy pushing and 'making it work no matter what', how much better would my art be now? Ah well, live and learn I suppose.
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| One of my latest needlefelted dog portraits |
So, moving into the future, I want to learn some new skills to add to and improve my artwork. I need to make my art more of an 'expression of myself' and less of what others expect me to 'produce'. There are more layers of me than what most people ever see.
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| Looking forward to putting more of the 'real' me into my work! |
2020 is time to finally get REAL!
Now I'm going to get back to work de-cluttering my studio and my head.
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