The Courage muscle
It’s easy to deflate yourself when you’re making art.
blue wash
It’s not just art-making – it’s making anything, really if you are serious about doing it as your vocation. Honestly, you ask yourself, who really cares whether this works or not? The world will not stop spinning, the grass and the children will grow regardless of what happens here.
red wash drying.
So you give up and do something else – or I do. Especially yesterday when I discovered the answer to “how come every time I come back to this painting from the far end of the studio I’ve forgotten what I was going to do?”. I figured it out while I was uploading old paintings onto this page, from 10 years ago: I’m 50, and my eyes are NOT what they used to be. I have trifocals, music glasses (stand distance), and I should have reading glasses too, but I don’t. Now I’ll get them. They’d be entirely helpful…
Silence (detail), from Sea Hear, 2001
And then you find yourself mucking about again, throwing paint, changing the light, drawing lines, running up and down stairs for more energy…
Courage is a muscle. I’m working out.
Bee, from About Rocks (with my dad), 2000
Happy Friday, all.
2 tasks left, then she will release me.
I am released:
Chalk Horse, 2014
48″48″, acrylic and mixed media on canvas