Author Archives: Jo Ann Brown-Scott

A CANARY FLIES the CANYON, available in about 5 days on Amazon.com

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

CanaryFliesTheCanyonFrontCover

BOOK COVER – A Novel by Jo Ann Brown-Scott, released in October, 2015

It has been a long time coming, and now I am able to say that in approximately 5 excruciatingly long days and nights this book of mine will be available anywhere in the world on Amazon.com. They tell me that my listing will appear in segments as it makes its total arrival on its Amazon page….kind of like waiting for paint to dry, jello to mold or rain to come.

I have published this book, my third, with the self-publishing division of Amazon which has been a creative, professionally rewarding experience; I received the hard-copy proof on Saturday, looked it over and found 1 tiny error that I decided to accept, in much the same way as the Amish women do when sewing quilts – they are not striving for perfection, because they know that is impossible, and so they purposely incorporate an abnormality into their quilts as an acknowledgment and an offering of human imperfection. Ok, I said to myself, rather than delay this book release one more single week I am just going to go with it.

There were several other terms of my surrender to the publishing process.

Other sundry aggravations, including a beautiful website I created through Yahoo SiteBuilder ( a DIY website builder that I am quite familiar with, having used it for over 7 years now) that will still not publish on all browsers, is still listed on my Yahoo SiteBuilder Control Panel as “Under Construction”  and which my tech support people in India still insist is in fact published. But it is not.

Try it for yourself at   http://www.joannbrownscottauthor.com

Lotsa luck with it…..I can sometimes get it to open on Google Chrome….but nowhere else.

I intend to get it fixed this week in another round of marathon phone conversations with Yahoo Small Business advanced tech support. The kind of conversation that has, up to this point, taken me to the brink of my patience and the edge of my tolerance with basic tech support people who are not able to rise beyond the glass ceiling of their tech knowledge…. and so you then have to purchase advanced tech support.

In the meantime I am over the moon with excitement about the book’s release. I hope nothing rains on my parade today!

http://www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com

http://www.joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

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Do you question randomness? What is destiny?

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

quote

The older I get the more I question the validity of a true, pure, innocent, random coincidence.

I question events that happened seemingly out of the blue, but really not, as I look back over my shoulder at life.

In my life, or any life, I often observe a pattern in the information that “randomly” comes to me at the oddest times; messages come in unpredictable spurts surrounded by different colorful contexts but bearing the same core theme, delivering the same basic wisdom that apparently I need to hear. If I listen, wow that is great. I’ll probably be just fine. If I don’t, the message will hit me again with a louder impact in a different context, trying to get my attention….hey! Listen to me! Get a clue!

It is not that I believe our lives are beyond our control and that nothing at all is random; what I do believe is that we are indeed given choices and of course our destiny lies in which path we take. Perhaps the choices we are given are not random. Perhaps the universe sends us just what we need to learn in the form of various choices of a certain category, based upon our purpose here on planet earth. Perhaps even based upon what we learned in a past life and what more needs to be experienced in order to live a more enlightened existence. The purpose would of course be to evolve as a human being; to contribute to the greater good, to be a better person and to leave some wisdom behind when we move on…

People often wonder what their purpose here really is. What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Rumi wrote about it repeatedly and our modern writers have made additions to those three big questions….I have a t shirt that adds, “Where are the cookies?” which is of course an important thing to learn about life.

My new novel is about a contemporary woman artist growing up and growing wide, as I like to say, since a good life has both width and depth; she is struggling to learn things about life and art. When a kid has no mentors, no advisors, no guidance and no quality advice as she grows up she has no choice but to go inward, and learn everything the hard way. But oddly enough, going inward and finding things out the hard way, the lonely way, is an excellent foundation for creative development. It stimulates your creative juices; it requires that you ask questions of yourself. In a way it is a twisted gift the universe has given you; a nasty trick that life plays, hoping you will rise to the occasion at some point and conquer the obstacles in your path, taking the high road and pushing through to the other side almost all by yourself. You finally arrive where you always hoped you would be, battered, wounded and worn, but just in the nick of time to enjoy it. Better late than not at all.

In my novel, “A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON” (soon available on Amazon.com) I track this evolution in one young woman. The title is enigmatic, whimsical and of course reveals its origin in the book…so please watch for that. But I am just wondering, have you ever seen a canary flying free in a rugged Colorado canyon, elevation 8500′ and climbing? A small yellow dot in the shadows and the sun, flying her heart out to a higher destination, dodging hawks and other birds of prey, through all kinds of weather? It does seem absurd, does it not?

“OLD SOUL” Makes Her Debut for the DYAO

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

vio6  before

violin2015 012   violin2015 009  after

copyright 2015, Jo Ann Brown-Scott, OLD SOUL

Every year the Denver Young Artists Orchestra hosts a fundraising event called the Painted Violin Event. Artists are selected, retired violins are sent out to them and we are all asked to paint the violins with a theme of our choosing, three-dimensionally,  then the violins go on tour for several months at many of the Denver area art galleries with the hope of attracting buyers to fund talented young kids who love music. It is an exciting time, receiving a violin, knowing your mission is to give it an inspired treatment by anointing it with a theme that is both appealing and marketable; one that speaks to people and sends them a message. Please visit  http://www.paintedviolin.com  or  http://www.DYAO.org  to see all the new violins for the 2015-2016 symphony season and those from all past seasons as well.

I have chosen to honor the authentic character of my particular old violin by embellishing her weathered patina with exotic stones and treasures including rare leopard jaspar from Madagascar (which is one of the oldest known gemstones containing healing powers), turquoise, African bone beads, Mexican silver, coins and other treasures from around the world. After all, she is a musical traveler, having provided the music of the world to audiences from all ethnicities and walks of life during her long career. The story of her origin and how she finally came into my hands is fascinating and involves the San Francisco Bay area and Yosemite Park to name just a few of the clues to her long life. Coincidentally or not, both of those locations are especially meaningful to my own family. Most of the items with which I have chosen to adorn her are from my own personal collection of magical found objects….saved through the years for some special purpose. This is an extraordinary purpose.

“Old Soul” is my second violin selected by the DYAO, (Denver Young Artists Orchestra) following my first violin included in the 8th season titled Scheherazade, which I have also written about on this blog. I have enjoyed a life-long career in fine art after obtaining my degree from the U. of Colorado. Most recently (2009) I  published a book titled The Creative Epiphany – Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations and taught mixed media painting in northern California. After returning to the Denver area in 2013, a place I consider my home, I enrolled in a class at Denver Art Students League taught by Homare Ikeda which further deepened my work as a contemporary abstract artist. My most recent work places an emphasis upon color, pattern and texture in compositions inspired by travels to Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Hawaii and the landscapes of the western USA. I am currently writing this blog based upon my art and my travels, which fuel my experiences with art, and I will soon publish my third book, a novel titled A Canary Flies the Canyon, within days…

This violin, as did my first, carries a deeper meaning than people will see on the surface – it truly found me. That is another story, but a story worthy of telling. Please stay tuned for continuing information and revelations about this violin and the larger story of one contemporary woman’s artistic life in my new novel A Canary Flies the Canyon.

A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON A Novel by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

tree roots

Tree Roots of Angkor Wat

A bunch of funny things happen on the way to publishing a novel….funnier on some days than on others of course. Two steps back, one step forward, three steps forward and then a day when 4 steps back take you by surprise, knocking the air right out of your lungs.

This has been a very weird day, aside from the wonderful visit by the Pope, which I have been attentive to and inspired by. That will be another blog – when I am feeling nicer and more benevolent of spirit…because I do so love this particular Pope.

Here’s the deal – I believe, as I write this, and because people tell me it is true, that my book’s website is now published…but I cannot see it on any of my own devices. Not on my PC, not on my Iphone, not on my laptop and not on my Ipad. Why? Please tell me why! Oh the Yahoo Sitebuilder tech support people have so many interesting answers. You would be amazed. I know a bit or two about computers, but their answers are all voodoo to me. I have spent hours on the phone, being walked through a dozen trouble-shooting procedures, but nada. Today, before noon, all of their fingers were pointing at Comcast. If any of you can enlighten me, please do so. Comcast and I had a long chat and it is not them – why would they possibly deny me access to my own website?

My new website address for my book is http://www.joannbrownscottauthor.com

Can you see it? All the people I spoke with this morning assure me that it is a beautiful website! I would love to have you visit it! Please tell me if you are able to do that…because I still want a solution so that I can go there myself.

I intend to offer some insight about the title of my novel, soon, because it is both whimsical and enigmatic, I think. Stay tuned for that – and I am actually able to edit my website and make additions and changes to it but I cannot see them myself when I am finished. This has got to be resolved!

Please bear with me. I am in the outer ring of technological hell.

Bone Tired But Happy

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

floor

The above photo is representative of the scramble my mind has been experiencing all day today. Actually it is the paint-splattered floor from my classroom at Denver Art Students League.

Hi. In my absence of the past couple weeks I am sure that issues of vast importance were solved and enormous progress was made with dozens of worldly problems, but in my little domain it was plenty enough that I managed to move to a different residence in the western area outside Denver (at the very base of the bumps that begin the Rocky Mountains) and my book is almost at the printer – thus out of my hands for the first time since it began itself over a year ago. It actually did begin itself, almost without me – I sat down one day with some thoughts that I was intending to call little personal essays. I began writing and one thing led to another – every thought needed expanding upon, every direction I took had to have the back story explained, then pretty soon I was dividing all of it into chapters…no one was more surprised than me. Life sneaks up on us, does it not?

Now I am exhausted and beaten up from the physical task of moving, which I did not sit by and just supervise, and mentally from the great challenge of trying to find the best words to use in a 516 page story about the life of a woman artist. Life came at me from both sides – the mental and the physical, with my deep muscle aches and my bruises and my mental so-tired-I-cannot-even-eat-or-sleep fatigue. What was I thinking? Why didn’t I time this better? Two huge things at once. I must be nuts.

Then there is the new website – the one about the book – which I was all ready to publish today and proudly guide you to. You would not believe the mess, the 3 hour mess, that a super-human Prince of Patience over in India helped me unravel so that 48 hours from now I might have my lovely new website for the book available to see. It was a marathon of communication he and I had on the phone; I have never experienced anything like it. And while it was in progress the company we were dealing with had a system-wide failure (probably my fault) and we had to repeat the same complicated procedure about 4 times. It was also a lesson in acceptance and faith, (just give it up to the universe) because I was hoping beyond hope that I would somehow manage to be helped by a person I could understand and vice versa – and my experience with him was beyond great. Hurrah for Aman in India!! Wish I knew him better.

Perhaps tonight I will sleep more than 4 hours. Perhaps I will not. As soon as the website goes live, or the book is finally published and listed on Amazon.com, you will be the first to know. We are in the final countdown for my novel A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON….

In the meantime, I will be unpacking…

That which does not kill you…..

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

IMG_7156 Ten moons til the move is over – Conifer Colorado, August 2015

That which does not kill you….makes you stronger, they say. Not sure about that, but I am in the ugly process of moving to a different part of the Denver area and I am really strong right now from lifting boxes that I should never be lifting. I have muscle definition and even abs. Still, I think it might kill me too. I am so driven to get this horrible transition over and done that I am being a little stupid. And there are stairs involved. I am trying to do as much of it as I can, myself, before the big truck pulls up. The other day I turned a large table upside down and slid it down the entry stairs, hanging onto one end of it for dear life so that we both would not smack into the front door at the bottom. After this entire process is over I will return to my former degree of common sense, jump back into the old groove and be writing regularly again.

I said my book would be published in late summer of 2015 and I still plan to achieve that goal if you will be kind enough to consider Indian Summer as being within the parameters of summer. Oh come on….stretch a little bit and just give me that. Yes there have been a few delays and if I explained them to you they would sound implausible so I won’t bother, but just take my word that they are not within the normal range of belief, but they are indeed true.

My website for the book is going live soon – very soon – even before the book is published. I will also be releasing another tidbit right here and now – this time the official book description. Please enjoy.

“A Canary Flies the Canyon” – a novel by Jo Ann Brown-Scott. Book description, all rights reserved.

Have you ever questioned randomness?

Do you wonder in your life, or any life, whether or not the choices we are offered are really choices or if fate determines our destiny?

With her third book Jo Ann Brown-Scott offers a fresh and energetic novel about the life-long evolution of a contemporary woman artist. In her characteristically vivid, painterly voice, at times both irreverent and profound, Brown-Scott composes the story of a maverick, free-spirited woman, awarded with creative DNA and privilege at birth yet scarred with a childhood of loss and family dysfunction. Fueled with these ideal circumstances for artistic creative development, the heroine Annie breaks loose to become the Bohemian abstract artist she was born to be.

During her artistic maturation, relationships with three prominent men in her life, a salesman, a contrarian and a Swede bring seemingly random disorder, chaos and instability as her art continues to acquire complexity and growth toward success. Facing complicated challenges Annie gradually becomes faith-based, spiritual and enlightened during her struggles to thrive. She questions randomness; can life’s moments of perfect timing be attributed to mere coincidental chance? Do we have any real choices, or is a life already written in the stars as karmic retribution or reward?

Art mirrors life; paintings are a life journal. In Annie’s mixed media life we discover her soul – her humor, courage, passion and her relentless amazement at life itself partnered with her embrace of all that remains mysterious and unknown. She learns of possible past lives; she questions the complete and utter finality of death. Her paintings morph into powerful, carefully structured compositions indicative of her intellect, fire and passion. Her messages about life are evident in the exuberant color and pattern of her art.

Only after Annie hits emotional rock-bottom and is brought to her knees with adversity does the universe present her with an option that hints at both restoration and renewal. They say that karma is a bitch, but more often it is just karma. When it does intervene it is nonjudgmental; pure, swift and arriving in the nick of time to level the playing field once again. It comes bearing gifts for a gutsy, risk-taking woman, many times burned; a chance and a choice that just might balance the scales and enable Annie to grasp some reward in the last chapter of her life. If she decides to take one more leap of faith, the results could be astounding. Will she choose wisely? What is her destiny?

Blog www.thecreativeepiphany.wordpress.com

Art Originals & Prints http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

Book http://joannbrownscottauthor.com – coming soon!

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As Promised….an Excerpt!

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Choices

Original painting by Jo Ann Brown-Scott  titled “Choosing the High Road” copyright 2015, all rights reserved, which will be used in the cover design for her book titled A CANARY FLIES the CANYON copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

I am nearing the publication of my third book, this time a novel, and I am pregnant with anticipation. It is a time-consuming process and it seems to go slower the closer I get to the goal. Sorry this has been so long in coming – I promised an excerpt weeks ago.

Well hey, first of all it is difficult to decide WHERE to excerpt from  – what tidbit is the best, especially for the first one? Should it come from the first chapter, necessarily, or not? Should all the excerpts come to you in chronological order? I guess so…. How many is enough? How much should they reveal?

The book has many moods. It can be black and white, multi-colored, highly textured and patterned with humor, melancholy and every emotion known to human kind.  It will be taking you along on a journey…the story of one young girl’s life that unfolds toward an artistic career. Of course that journey is fraught with random (or not?) surprises and challenges. Life does seem, at times, to be pre-planned (almost scripted, with an agenda in mind, hmm…) and so this young girl begins to question the random-ness of things. But then she questions everything….

Excerpt from the novel  A Canary Flies the Canyon, copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

After great consideration, I offer you the first excerpt from Chapter Two called “Blind Spots”; a quote from Annie.

“I have thought long and hard about who my female role models were as I was growing up and I cannot think of a single one. I loved my mother, and much later saw her as accomplished and courageous to have done what she did, but I did not idolize her and she never talked with me in conversations of any length or significance. If she had ever once just sat me down and requested a heart to heart girl talk with me about life, or about anything that might have guided me toward a course to follow, our relationship would have been a far different one. There was not a single male or female who ever took me aside and truly talked to me, mentored me about my future, gave me advice, encouragement or became a person in whom I felt I could confide. I think that has been part of my problem. I was always rudderless, sailing through life on a free-spirited wing and a prayer, hoping to somehow stumble upon the Northern Star. I never found it; certainly not by choice it became my norm to depend upon no one, and that closed the door to my soul a little bit. I was starting out brave but naïve; smart but innocent. I was often lonesome, seldom in meaty conversations with anyone and primarily a visual person, an observer of life. I did not know it at the time but these are the ideal characteristics and circumstances for feeding creativity and artistic development. A person goes inward and learns everything the hard way.”

Author BIO

Jo Ann Brown-Scott, born in Ohio, is an artist and a writer living in the Denver, Colorado area. Her degree from the University of Colorado emphasized studio art, art history, literature and psychology. In conjunction with her art and literary careers she has taught interior design at a community college in Denver and was an instructor of mixed media collage in California. She has years of experience in sales and marketing including gallery director positions, event planning, client acquisition and book publishing.

Jo enjoys travel to favorite places such as Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand and Italy among others, finding that travel feeds and informs her art and writing. She believes that painting and writing have much in common, both requiring that a story be told in a unique voice with a distinctive vocabulary and palette. Brown-Scott’s abstract, mixed media paintings and collages have been exhibited throughout Colorado and the west; her work is currently shown by appointment.

She has published two previous non-fiction books on the subject of self-realization and creativity, specifically involving true stories of life-changing epiphanies. Her second book, The Creative Epiphany, Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations, won Best Books Award Finalist in the non-fiction narrative category of the National USA Book News awards.

She has two grown children who are each gifted with literary and artistic skills.

Blog www.thecreativeepiphany.wordpress.com

Art Originals & Prints http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

Book http://joannbrownscottauthor.com – coming soon

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Following up on my previous blog……

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott
photo courtesy of cifwatch.com
“The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.
Lewis Carroll from The Walrus and the Carpenter published 1871
Read more at http://quotationsbook.com/quote/44911/#MoZfq47z7D4AFLcu.99
It seemed too appropriate to even believe…what this Jabberwocky quote says, in just the brief couple of lines quoted here. Their relevance to my new novel came to me in the middle of the night like a random flash of brilliance in the indigo. (Your brain never sleeps when you write a book.) My novel addresses many of the subjects in this Lewis Carroll quote, although his language is called Jabberwocky. People who turn from kings to cabbages right before your eyes and things that seemed too impossible to believe at the time they were indeed happening – things which I had thought would only occur when and if pigs could fly. I see the humor in that, of course, and the book is humorous, but also deeply, seriously sobering in places.
Stay tuned!

“The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things…” Lewis Carroll

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

bookphoto

Yes it is almost time. Imagine my anticipation. I am about to birth a new baby novel after nearly a decade of purple-faced, teeth-clenching labor. My god it is difficult to put a book together. Have you ever tried it? I should have just stuck an ice pick up my nose; it would have been less painful. On some days it was pure agony. Ten minutes of tending the same damn paragraph seem like hours of torture. You call yourself nasty names. You eat junk food, you do not sleep well. You second guess, third guess and sixteenth guess every single scene, every conversation, every insight. And pretty much no one cares until it is really done. You get no sympathy.

If you are also an artist, as I am, sometimes you attempt to work on a painting for a brief intermission as you are mulling over the words that will come next, and writing is a lot like painting so it seems so logical that it would be a great idea to create  both book and art side by side…thriving in a parallel universe. Both require a distinct voice, a unique vocabulary of expression and gesture, a selection of color, pattern and texture to flesh out the composition or the plot. And the sub-plots. Writing can be a lot of fun, on the good days. Painting can also be quite enjoyable when you are in the flow. But I have discovered through the years that one of those pursuits is capable of blocking out the sun for the other one. They compete for my attention and they dilute what I am doing into less powerful work if I try to excel in both at once.

What was the delay, you ask? Ten years? That’s crazy. What takes so long about writing a book? Well, I had a fabulous story but no ending. Then stuff happened that inspired and informed the book idea and everything fell together in one big loud, undeniable way as sometimes (but not often enough) stuff does. They say that we need to write about what we know and what we are most comfortable with in order to be authentic and genuinely entertaining. Obviously an author would not, in her right mind, take on the task of writing a book about some wild-ass thing or another that she knows nothing about, because faking it always shows. So unless an author has endless piles of money to pay a fleet of research assistants…

I am my own research assistant. Therefore this book is a novel about a contemporary woman artist.

It is now finished.

Soon I will be able to refer you to the book’s website, as a tasty hors d’oeuvre, and then the actual book – we are in “cover design” mode right now. Soon it will be listed with Amazon.com, so no matter where in the world you happen to be you will be able to get your hands on it. It will also be available on Kindle. I’ll let you know when all that happens.

MANY thanks to all of you for following this blog and feeding my artistic and literary soul – I have sharpened my skills within this blog using all of you as my audience and yes, my guinea pigs, but always with great respect for you and  the enhancement of the “some-day” book; this blog and my two previous books have taught me to work smarter not harder, to pull up the best words faster when I need them, to say things sharper and more clearly with fewer words, and to be consistently using my skills. I am going to have a huge celebration when this book is released – you all will hear it from wherever you are, one way or another, through this blog, Amazon, the new book website, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. I hope you can all come….I really would like you to come.

Stay tuned for the first excerpt!

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Fine Art America – http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

Starving Artists and other misc.

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

tears artists

I recently attended the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver – we spent about five hours strolling around and it was hot sweaty fun, on constant sensory overload and hoping to find greatness every once in a while. The people-watching is as fascinating as the art. Since I cannot publish any of my photos of the art, and I took many, without violating copyright laws these two pics will have to suffice. The collective cultural mood of the weekend was friendly, the people typically free-spirited and a little on the crazy side. My kind of folks.

As you might imagine, there were 3-4 streets, both sides, jammed with art booths. It took a long time to see it all and yet I am convinced it was worth our time, because we are both serious artists ourselves and because it has traditionally been enlightening to attend and view the enormous variety and check out the current trends. Paintings, Pastels, Ceramics, Photography, Wood Working, Jewelry, Collage & Mixed Media, etc.etc. A new surprise around every corner.

You would think that Denver is screaming with fine art – we have the oldie but goodie Cherry Creek Art District, the newer South Santa Fe Drive Art District, the upcoming Rino Art District (river-north), the Highlands, the LODO (lower downtown) Art District and the various neighboring suburban art areas in old Littleton, Greenwood Village & Centennial, as well as Boulder just up the road about 45 minutes. There is the highly prestigious Denver Art Museum, the newly acquired and widely acclaimed Clyfford Still Museum and many other fine places to view art. Denver has become a foodie town; I wish we would become a fine art destination town.

People tell me that good abstract art is hot right now in Denver. I just don’t know exactly where. If I knew I would go there immediately. To me, it seems that really great abstract art shows up sporadically and mostly not at all. My instructor, Homare Ikeda, at the Art Student’s League of Denver is one of the best abstract artists around. We found some sophisticated abstract art, quite exciting, at the booth of Michael McKee from Fountain Hills, AZ. at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, and he comes back almost every year. Western art is always popular, and usually it is very fine here in Denver. There was recently an important show of women artists’ work. And of course there is also a plentiful supply of junk.

Denver is hot right now; we are some of the most well-educated and fit people in the country. We are almost electrically charged with energy, jobs, people moving here in droves and a real estate market like it used to be in California. However, galleries close here as fast as they open. One week they are here and the next they are gone. As an artist it is very difficult to break into the gallery scene unless you want to be in the kind of shop that carries a lot of trivia as well. True fine art galleries that endure are rare. That is because a large number of inexperienced idiots with a bit of money believe that all you have to do is find a large space, paint the walls white, put up a sign, open the door and you will have collectors streaming in to make purchases. Heh. Omg. Really? Yes there are still people like that out there.

I know very few artists who live here who are not starving. We all have to have other incomes. The people who rent booth space at Cherry Creek Art Festival, or any of the other summer art fairs pay outrageous amounts of money to set up their booths all across the country – very few are local people – and it is a gypsy life for them, traveling around in the art fair circuit and working through all kinds of extreme heat, wind, hail and torrential rain. They have to be able to cover and protect their precious wares at the drop of a hat or a hailstone. It is not an easy life.

But being artistic is not, and never has been an easy life – you have heard me talk about it before in my blogs. It ebbs and sometimes it flows, but it is always unpredictable.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes about artists, only a little bit relevant to what I am talking about today, but always important to remember:

The greater the artist the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.  Robert Hughes