Now What?

Let me start with what you all probably already know.  I believe in God, and in his son, Jesus Christ, and while I'm at it, the Holy Spirit, 3 in 1. (They are very real in my life in such a way that I won't get into now lest I miss the point of my post. Ask if you'd like to know.)

Why do I say so now?  What difference can this mean to my painting?

I am now faced with a question I didn't expect to reckon with:  what exactly do I paint, and to whose glory?

On one hand, I want my work to be marketable.  It's practical to want to earn money, and we all need it in this world.  There are certain subjects that sell, that are fun to paint and that pay the bills.

But then...there is originality and the work of creativity...being original:  Making that sound that only you can make as a uniquely created instrument. It couldn't exist before, because you didn't exist before.  That kind of work takes courage and chutzpah, which marries audacity to courage.  It's work that may be good, may be bad...but it's about the journey...a path of exploration.

There is a safe route, and then there is the road which attract critics, detractors and also the enlightened who can appreciate invention, even if they don't like the actual invention.  It also might not sell.

     

     God willing, I'm always going to be a student (even should I miraculously become as successful a painter as some of my favorite greats). Exploration is fun, though not usually marketable.  Do I strike a balance between marketability and unique creation?  Do I have the chops to do that?

(I wasn't allowed to explore being an artist very much as a child. I had all of the artistic impulses, but they were mainly silenced and suppressed in school..With the exception of my 4th grade year with my best teacher, Floy Schrage.  She valued creativity as highly as mathematics and spelling...maybe even a trifle more highly.  I'll always be grateful for her.)

Art students copy masters n order to learn to paint.  But...there comes a point in the journey when they need to see what they can do.  Risk themselves.

I'm at a crossroads.

I've already painted things I know people want, and they've sold.  But it's a tremendous feeling to paint what I've wanted to paint and have it sell.  It's a much more daunting to do that, but it's also infinitely more satisfying.

I'll say this...even when I painted what people have shown they want, I've done it my way.  It has my style and so it does have that uniqueness. But, when I paint what I've been inspired to paint, or something in a flight of fancy and it has been received...well..that's an experience I'd like to repeat.

Meanwhile, I feel how tentative I am in searching for subject matter.  It is exactly here where my faith enters in..I don't know what it's going to look like just yet, but I'm praying.

I know that no two of us are alike...I want to have that courage to make that unique sound.  God, help me.  I'm not even sure I know how to do that. Though I have done it before.

God is the creator..he can certainly teach me how to create. I pray that he will show me.

Thanks for listening...

Evelyn

Here was a flight of fancy:

I gave it to the one who loved it when she saw it.  It was to be a trio as I played with different color ideas.  The other canvas is just waiting to be painted. I never prepared the third canvas.

I will paint the second soon, it will be fun to make artistic decisions that have nothing to do with line or subject matter.  I might even be bold and make the third after all...

Joined a local art class for at least a month

This little work is flawed, but it represents getting out there again.  I'm so rusty.

This was painted in Acrylics from a wallet-sized photo, and it's 9 x12.

I'm grateful to make new painting friends.  They're more important to me than they know or I knew.

I hope I can keep participating. 

I should be prouder of this little painting.  I just see the flaws, but the kinder part of me sees someone getting back in the saddle and is happy about it.

Church, installment 1, My Early Years.

Hello again, dear Church.
It's been a while since we've truly communed.  You are such an interesting study.

I wasn't initially raised going to visit you, Church, except for infant baptism and the rare occasions when my mom would dress us up to take us to visit you on the odd Easter. You were like school, that is you smelled like school, only you were dressier, shorter in length, and you contained more adults than you did children. Like school, I felt that you were something that was required of and happening to me.

Like school, I still got grouped with children my age and in that group, we outnumbered the lone adult.  And also like school, I still felt shy, conspicuous and socially awkward among my assigned peers. Unlike school, you told more stories and you used felt dolls on a felt board to act the stories out, like a static puppet show.. so you were a bit more creative.  That bit of creativity was not lost on me.  It distracted me from your antiseptic, basement-y smell, towering adult in charge, and from the embarrassment of not knowing any of the answers.  Very much like school, I was glad when you were over.  I didn't think it very desirable that you were held on a Sunday feeling you should have been 'instead' of school, not 'in addition' to school.

I walked away thinking: it's not fun to come to church once in a blue moon.  You probably have to attend regularly to feel you belong.

(Next installment to follow...the years of going voluntarily)

Monday. Leap Year Day

SO, ever since people figured out you can make money blogging, I got messed up.  Of course I'd love to be one of those money-making people.  Problem is...to be one of those people you have to follow 10 steps, monetize, force yourself, etc....  you also have to self-promote.

  I'm so sick of self-promoting e-mails,etc. I have helped others promote.  But...I think I understand now that that is not who I (personally) want to be.  I'd love a readership, but not at the expense of being who I am: an erratically paced person trying to figure out how best to live my life.  People self-promote for millions of reasons, one of them being that they are trying to make a living and support a family.  I salute you if you are one of those people. Honestly.  That is very hard to do. 

I have the same need for money as everybody else, but my body has it's own ideas.  It's absolutely insisted that I stay small and private and keep my stressors at as low a level as possible (as humanely possible); if I don't stay within my limitations I have to spend copious amounts of time trying to recover from deviating. Those times are just terrible.

So I am blogging again, at my pace. For my enjoyment.  And once I say it once on Facebook, that will be the extent of my self promoting.  There's a real freedom in that, actually. This blog is for me, but it's public for those who care to visit.  A comment to let me know you stopped by would be just great, but I don't anticipate any. The web has gotten so huge. These days traffic comes from social networking.  

Speaking of social networking, I have downsized on Facebook.  GOOD GRIEF, it so political.  I'm so sick of politics I could scream. (Once.  Then I'd get exhausted or get a headache and regret the outburst, so NO.)

We started going to church again.  We attended a perspective member seminar on Saturday and both decided "yes".

Church.  That's another topic.  So, I'm going to post this and say adieu to this post and write one called Church.

Starting up again!

I have started toying with lettering.  Some quotes turn out very well..others not so much.  But that's the beauty of being a beginner.  The beauty is in the effort and in pressing through the vulnerability of showing your flawed new work.

I'm going to post the successes and the not-immediately-rewarding efforts.

I have one of those today.

It's a good baseline piece that proves that there is still so much to learn and that I am still tentative.

Still, as the first one I'm going to post, I wish it were better!

Thanks for checking in! Say a prayer for me as I learn, please!