at peace......

I'm more at peace with my work than i've been in a long time. I'm making new work regularly and i'm making progress in it. I feel better when i paint. i would like to say that i'm one of those arteests that would die without painting.....but i'm not. i don't feel compelled to paint or something terrible will happen. But i will say that when i am working regularly on the work...i feel good and the rest of my life makes a lot more sense.

i've also never been one to keep sketchbooks. one sketchbook can literally keep me for years and yet i have 4 going at any given time but the work i'm doing speaks more than my sketchbooks ever will. i guess if you gathered up all my miscellaneous sketches and words and random scraps of paper i could bind them and that would be my sketchbook. to hell with convention....

rough

I had a professor in college who said painting is a lot like standing behind a horse. You know you shouldn't stand there but you are. The horse kicks you, you fall down, you get back up, your dazed, but instead of moving, you just stand there. You know you should move, but you can't. And so the horse kicks you again. And the cycle repeats.

I don't feel moved to paint everyday. And I know a lot of other artists who don't either. and I know some who wake up hot to paint, and can't quit. I am the kind of person or artist or painter or whatever that if something else peaked my creativity tomorrow, I would be fine never creating another piece of work again. But then again what is the work?

is it the actual act of creation that fufills me or is it the craft of painting? I know it isn't the finished work because as I'm sure some other artists can attest, once I am finished with a work, I am done with it. Dead. I don't care if I ever see it again. It's over and I am on to something else.

So then, what makes the painter? Is it the work, the finished product, or the actual act of painting.

anyway.......

new work

so i'm in the process of making new work and updating the website....again. time is limited, as it is with everyone, and ever since the promotion at the day job, my creative spurts have been few and far between. mostly consisting of me making a big mess in my studio...getting all my stuff out to work.....starting at blank sketch books.....realizing i am tired......going to bed.


but lately, my time is feeling like more my own so i've actually BEGUN work and then went to bed..which is progress. I keep thinking back to the Eric Carle quote:

" You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind..."

I spend way too much time doing that. Thinking about all the grandiose plans i have and never starting.

addicted to myspace

so lately i'm addicted to myspace. i've been constantly searching for people i know and i've found all these people i haven't thought about in ages. it's really cool that in addition to the people that you come into contact everyday, there is this whole other world of people that you knew in a different place, light, or time that you are connected with. freakin brilliant.