Last year I took on the challenge of creating something every single day. 365 somethings! I surprised myself and completed it. Mostly loving it, sometimes not. And then something curious happened. When I was done with that year long project, I didn't want to make anything. A lot of stuff happened in my life (my amazing Dad died) and art was the thing I probably needed most, but cared the least about. So I just let myself be OK with doing nothing. I hiked (a LOT) and just let time pass. And now I feel it starting to come back, but in a different way. More about the process and less about the outcome. Just the feeling of moving color across a page (using my fingers a lot) and making marks on a page (there is just something about making a bold, black, inky mess). I've started keeping art journals, so called because that's the current term-du-jour, but they're more scrapbook like. I do anything I want in them, paste in things, write lists of stuff to do, smear paint, scribble. I love the idea of layers of life in those pages and recently pulled out some old sketchbooks of really horrible stuff and started washing over them with paint. Loving the results of knowing the bad is always part of what makes the good that much better. And who knows, this moment's "good" may well be the next moment's "bad". And so it goes.
Peace Offering to Myself 24 x 36, from Fine Art America
