Back to Being Creative

I have been spending the last several weeks not painting. There was the reception at Artspace Gallery where works I had already completed were exhibited and then the Illusions Exhibition where I won Best of Show. Then all those paintings came back to the studio and had to be hung somewhere. When was exhibiting my art just at out of town fairs that part was easy - you just left everything boxed till the next show. The next show these days is my studio which is open three days a week and by appointment.

After everything was back in place there was the Been There/Done That Art sale I did this last weekend with a couple of friends. Saturday was very good and I ended up reducing the clutter in my studio by quite a bit. Now that I have my studio back it is time to get busy being creative again. I have an artistic friend that seems to jump into this mode quite quickly. I find I have to sort of sneak up on it. Don't want my muse taking off do I?

I have come to realize there is a path to be taken to get where I want to go. It begins by cleaning up the studio and doing some re-organizing and review of possible subjects. Then you have to sort drawings and decide on canvas sizes. Now that I stretch my own canvas I don't have to dash off an order for certain sizes of canvas and move that particular sketch to the back of the stack. Today I stretched a canvas to match a drawing I want to paint. I like this better than re-doing the sketch to fit the canvases on hand. And once frames. I now make those too.

I transferred the drawing to the canvas and that now gives me four paintings to begin and two to finish.

I am generally rather tired after all this and so I begin with something creative but not critical. In this particular instance I started with beading a necklace. My friend Jessica gave me the carnelian and it went quite well with some red jasper fetishes I have had around for about ten months. Yes, beading is not painting but it is creating and "mixing" colors. I see it almost as a magical incantation to invite the muse back after a time of being busy and businesslike.

Tomorrow brushes and paints and canvas.