Some past work

Before I start posting anything new, I want to post some starting pieces.  Here are some of charcoal drawings and I'll try and get a couple paintings up soon.

Letter to a Friend

This post from Dreama Tolle Perry's blog really hit home with me today.

Here's a quote:

"An artist will paint when the pain of not painting becomes greater than the pain of painting" That's a quote from Art and Fear. YOU think you are a unique loser. That your situation is different, so different than what other creative people face. You think that others are writing and producing rather than sitting and thinking about it. You think you are the only one who has been paralyzed with fear to the point of not getting out of the car to do a walk on acting part. You fear that what you have hoped to be is a myth, a lie, that you have deluded yourself.

The untruth here is this. Thinking that somehow this is not how it works. That if you were really meant to be a painter, a writer, a musician, you would just be chomping at the bits, painting regularly, acting regularly, taking massive action every moment on your dreams. There is what we think it means to be a creative person and lead a creative life and then there is the reality of what it means to be a creative person and lead a creative life. Bringing something into reality from nothing. Some thing from no thing. Second guessing ourselves. Hoping for good things, certain we deserve none of it. Because somehow we feel we haven't earned it. We are not smart as others, weren't born to the right parents, grew up in the wrong place, attended the wrong schools, made poor job decisions, hung out with the wrong people. How skilled and schooled we become on berating ourselves."

And there is a lot more in the letter that Dreama wrote to her friend that speaks to my heart.  I'm going to reread that tonight before I pull out my paints to start creating number one of a thousand.

The thought behind the blog

I love to paint and draw, but without formal training or practicing regularly it has been hard to develop my own style.  Lately I've avoided painting because I've been afraid the piece won't turn out.  I know that the end result isn't the reason I paint.  I paint to express myself, to vent, to explore, to remind someone that I care about them. I follow a lot of art blogs and recently one artist commented that you don't hit your stride 'til your thousandth painting.  YOWZA!  A thousand paintings?  That seemed insane when I first read it.  But then I thought about it and the idea of that many pieces started to bring comfort.  If I can take each work for what it is and not feel this pressure for each one to be perfect, maybe I can enjoy painting again.  If I'm committing myself to create at least 1,000 paintings, then each one isn't going to be a masterpiece.  Maybe I can just enjoy the journey.  So that's what this blog is about: recording my journey through 1,000 paintings.