Time and Light Switches

It has always bothered me when peoples action don’t line up with their words. When it becomes a do as I say and not as I do situation. So on Wednesday when things got hard I had to take my own advise. Had to listen to my own words and act on them.   I was overwhelmed by the shaming phrase’s repeating all throughout my mind. “I need to get up, I need to move, I have to go paint, I have to do something, right now, we should be working right now, have to have to have to, should should should, NOW.”  I was paralyzed. I was stuck in this spiral and pit for hours.  I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I thought surly there is something wrong because I can’t just make myself go do what I should be doing. But is wasn’t me being unfaithful to motivation, it was shame, it was anxiety. In “An Artists Identity” I write about how artists tend to derive their identity from the art they create, and how this is seen as a virtue when it is truly a vice. I has unconsciously fa...

Most of my life I’ve been fighting myself, fighting to get out of bed, fighting to love myself, fighting to want to live this life. And some of the fighting has been good, has been holy, but some of it was just fighting.   For about the last month I’ve spent 5 days a week painting. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much consistent time painting in my whole life, honestly my wrist is sore from how much I’ve been doing. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so level headed, so emotionally centred and at peace. Sometime last month I felt like I was struck over the head, it was this sudden running need and want to just paint and paint and paint. It was this nearly consuming desire to make good on what I had been saying for a year now. To make good on the promise I made to my younger self, that I would make my best run at being an artist and that we would crush the starving artist stereotype.  In order to make good on my word I had to stop fighting myself. I wanted to paint, truly...

  Way back in the beginning of February I talked about being faithful to my creative process. I talked about how being a good stewed was its own reward, and how faithfulness was most evident in the small things. And now toady, in the days of changing leaves and changing people, I’m getting to live in the reward. I am far from the end of the process because faithfulness and stewardship are life long roads to be walked. But even still I get live in the reward because I started this process long ago and am now further ahead than I would have been if I had waited till I “felt” like it.   The reward of creative spent is more creativity earned. If you so desire to be more creative you have to start with what you have. You will not be given more than you can handle. I used to worry that if I spent all my creativity that would be that and I would have no more. Now that is how much of this physical life works, there is food until it is eaten, there is snow until it melts, there is fi...

My pallet tells many stories. The stories of all the places I’ve been and all the places I’ve survived. It has seen me rise and it has seen me fall. Some days I think my pallet knows me better than I know myself. It has been a faithful companion all these years. My pallet is stained all the colours of my obsessions, emotions, and tribulations. It has seen every face I’ve ever worn and watched as they all crumbled to dust.   Oh the stories my pallet could tell you, of the time I stood crying in my prom dress, and of the time I first saw the face of God. It could tell you of the depth of my rage and it could tell you how tender my heart remains. My pallet, should it one day sprout a mouth and speak, would give all my secrets away for the steep steep price of listening.  My easel has born the brunt of my brushstrokes, but my pallet has felt the ghost of the punches I never thew. My pallet has held the weight of all my tears, and it has withstood the tests of time.  If ...

September 1st, its the beginning of things. It’s the beginning of the end of the year. At least in my head September has always felt like the beginning of the end. I’m happy to know that the sweltering heat is nearly past and its almost sweater time. I like the fall, mostly because it feels like the rest before the rest, it feels like the closest to what my heart looks like, but partly I like the fall because I like the word falling.   This week I did what I could, which doesn’t look like much but I ate well and washed my face often and I tried.  I got back into the studio yesterday and was immediately overwhelmed. To start with my work space was a mess, as it has been for months, and finally yesterday was the day I couldn’t take it anymore and tidied up the table that serves as my workstation. It was probably 20 minutes of finding homes for things and trying to remember how I had had it organized in the first place. But it was 20 minutes well spent, because at end not eve...