Let the beauty we have be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. – Rumi

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Yeah yeah yeah – the Year Long Canvas is still sitting there staring at me. I am stalled out with her. I am becalmed like a sailboat at sea, but enjoying where I am. I am living in the NOW.

I am currently painting other stuff that allows me to arrive at completion, because I am a task driven person and I like a feeling of accomplishment. I have not abandoned the YLC Project, but I seem to be on summer vaca from her. I’m spending time with people I enjoy, painting just for the fun of it, tending to my sunburn, going to concerts and hiking in the woods, in the rain, wearing my sparkling tiara that I was urged to make mine at a mountain garage sale on Sunday. Of course that’s silly. Would you deny me the pleasure of being silly? You better not….because I am hangin’ exclusively with people who make me happy these days – the ones who contribute positive vibes to my life – the ones who prop me up and make me laugh and leave me with a warm glow. You all know who you are.

The Year Long Canvas needs my attention, I guess, but she is a great looking painting just the way she is. I don’t have it in me right now to alter her. I am SURE I have learned whatever lessons she was supposed to teach me already….pretty sure.

So if you are one of the ones who keeps ragging on me about making some more changes to her, just for the sake of change, you need a really strong argument to convince me that I need to do something. Especially now. Maybe later in the summer when my back is against the wall and I know I am going to have to come up with some answers to questions from my esteemed instructor Homare Ikeda – maybe then I will panic and make some kind of change to her. But right now I am following the advice of that same esteemed instructor who commanded all of us students to HAVE FUN and ENJOY THE SUMMER and PLAY!. That’s what I want to do – that’s what I’m talkin’ about. I am going to do THAT.

Relax – YLC is just fine. Alive and well and living here, with other canvases…..the ones who are finished. She is in good company.

Jo Ann Brown-Scott – to see additional art, visit the links below:

http://www.epiphanysfriends.com

http://joannbrownscottart.artspan.com/large-multi-view/single/2357019-0-/.html%5B/embed%5D

When You Want to Sell Art…get real

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Both are 20″x60″ mixed media panels using paint, exotic papers and polished stones – zoom in and see detail

Ok let’s get practical – whether I am an artist, a musician, a writer, a cook or a candlestick maker, as the fairy tale goes, I would very much like to sell my art. I know, however, that I can’t count on consistent, regular money coming in from my art sales. So I have other sources of income…and/or I do various types of artwork so that I will appeal to a wider audience.

I would love to be able to do abstract expressionistic paintings for the rest of my life and sell them like intellectual hotcakes to the more finely tuned collectors who are authentic followers; those who understand and appreciate the style and know the excellent from the nondescript in the world of abstraction. Those folks are few and far between. Unless you get really lucky and you are an extremely hot property, quite gifted and have either the tenacity of an artistic pitbull or the ability to be in exactly the right place at the right time while hob-knobbing with the movers and shakers, you will not make it huge in the abstract expressionist movement. Doing so would be the equivalent of being a star athlete, a mega movie star or a best selling author who literally owns real estate on the New York Times best seller list. Slim to none. Pipe dreams. Get real.

Of course I am more than happy to sell an abstract piece whenever I can no matter how sporadically it comes my way.

In the meantime, I paint, create and even construct other art that is more commercial, more marketable, simpler, more design oriented and way trendier, less expensive and just fun to have hanging in your tastefully decorated home. I have taught Interior Design, so I have to admit that I get turned on by a lovely home – especially if it is eclectic and has a well diversified collection of furniture, art, antiques, rugs, pottery, books, and some funky found objects. And most people’s homes, these days, are eclectic, because we travel and bring exotic treasures home, we receive expensive gifts from friends, we love second hand stores and thrift shops, we buy neat things from Pottery Barn and it all has to coordinate nicely into a home space. So I create my more commercial pieces of artwork with several things in mind, knowing that they will compliment many different kinds of homes.

Therefor I have to keep current on whatever trends are currently trending. The most popular paint colors. The newer fabrics that are being shown. The patterns of area rugs. The furniture styles….and the kinds of art that are selling to people who are not necessarily art intellectuals but still enjoy having a stunning home. No matter what your style of choice is at this very moment, and no matter what your tastes are forever, chances are you are always on the hunt for a great new item for your home that will make it unique and reflective of who you are.

The photos I have included are some examples of the more commercial artwork I am doing. They are all one of a kind pieces, unique and certainly not mass produced, but labored over and created with heart and soul. Prices range from $600 up….

Red Barn abstraction

Seed Pod

The Year Long Canvas #14 – Progress, Endurance and a Big Spill

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

“There’s a little black spot on the sun today

That’s my soul up there

It’s the same old thing as yesterday

That’s my soul up there

There’s a black cat caught in a high treetop

That’s my soul up there

There’s a flagpole rag and the wind won’t stop

That’s my soul up there.”

Lyrics to KING OF PAIN by STING

YEAR LONG CANVAS – very beginning, last week and today’s small progress

Well hello again – the YLC canvas and I welcome you back. In the previous post I listed some of my background info and news, and since I am putting together a brand new portfolio I had all that information gathered together so it was convenient and easy to do a blog around it. The painting I posted with that blog entry WAS NOT the YLC, as I hope you realized from its title….and its composition. That post was a delay and denial tactic. The YLC has sat untouched.

So we are due for an update on the old YLC and this period of time has been tough – I knew those times would get here…. I have not been able to concentrate much on the YLC for the past few days. I have been concerned about some issues that are so near and dear to me that my mind is preoccupied. Nothing life threatening, just annoying small stuff that usually I can shake off, but this week not so much for some reason. Even the horrific news about Iraq has me rattled. As if I could do anything to change it. The result is that the YLC has not enjoyed a single new stroke or even a fond glance for about 2 weeks. But I have gotten a lot of other tasks done. Stuff that requires absolutely no intelligence, actually, but has to get done. One of which was to change the printer ink, when I spilled red ink all over me, instantly looking as if I had been brutally stabbed in my thigh, stomach and hand…and it will not scrub off. So what an interesting weekend that will make when I get out and around.

After the stabbing however I did make a few offerings to the YLC and the art Buddha. Nothing major – uninspired things you might not even notice, nevertheless I can honestly claim that I changed her. That is all I have to do, you know, is keep changing her.

Just for fun I have pictured the canvas as she was when I started on her months ago, then the second photo is how she looked before I worked on her today, and the third photo is the newest version of the canvas as she is this very minute. Maybe you will see the changes. If not, don’t worry about it. It’s pretty uneventful.

Have a lovely weekend!

Background Information and Announcements

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

I would like to thank you all for visiting the blog and keeping up with the progress on the YEAR LONG CANVAS. I appreciate it very much!

I often get requests for more information about my art and requests to see a larger selection of my recent paintings.. Therefor I am offering a brief background and bio and some links. My website http://www.epiphanysfriends.com is the best place to visit for more images and updated news.

For those of you in the Colorado area there is a show titled WATERMEDIA at the Evergreen Center for the Arts beginning this month; opening night is June 27th, 2014 from 4-7pm. You are most welcome to attend. Three of my paintings have been accepted for that event.

BRIEF UPDATE

Returning to the Denver area in mid-2013 after seven years in northern California has been motivating and renewing. I am reconnecting with old friends, painting with a fresh, spontaneous energy and becoming active in the Denver art scene once again.

Artist’s Statement

The art began with watercolor and developed a life of its own; it has evolved, grown wider horizons and added depth through the chapters of my life, almost without my assistance. Painting with acrylic provided new possibilities. I offer different takes or viewpoints now, while still using my same recognizable style as the common thread over time. Color, pattern and texture are my passion, the message in the art, my secret; yet there for all to interpret. I am motivated by the goodness of most people, my basic wonder at our existence, and the stunning beauty of earth.

Art Themes – Abstract Expressions Indicative of Universal Themes

Recent fascinations and preoccupations that scroll through my thoughts and spill their subtle messages from paintbrush onto canvas include the concept of times passage, ethnic cultures across the globe and the basic, primal simplicity of the days and nights we all share. In a world of chaos and random events, the spirituality of certain humble rituals common to all of our lives captures my attention. I celebrate the rituals that unite us, the hearts and minds that hold us together.

Brief Bio

I grew up in a large country home on eight acres of green hillside and dale in southern Ohio, outside of Dayton. During those early years it became apparent that art was my passion and I came west to the University of Colorado in Boulder to study art and never went back. I emphasized painting and sculpture along with English Literature and psychology. I have been painting professionally ever since.

“I began professionally marketing my art at the suggestion of a much-admired instructor after college was over and I had begun living in Evergreen, Colorado. In 1984 I was personally invited by the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce to create an original painting – a snowy winter scene, reminiscent of Evergreen and the Christmas season – from which the very first Christmas in Evergreen Limited Edition Posters and Christmas Cards were printed and sold. That year began the tradition of the Evergreen Christmas Poster which in subsequent years became a contest open to local artists. It also became a pivotal moment in launching my own career to a higher degree.”

In addition to painting I have taught interior design, published two books about life-changing epiphanies and taught mixed media collage to adults for three years in California and held positions in sales, marketing and gallery management, to name just a few of my other incarnations. Currently I am concentrating solely on my painting, enjoying the exhilaration of fresh inspiration, less driven by the demands of others and more in tune with my own priorities. My art is wiser in character, weathered by time, and unapologetically relaxed. The art reveals all, as it always has, and is better with some years on it.

NEWS AND LINKS

ADDITIONAL RECENT WORK can be seen at www.artspan.com – Jo is listed under ARTISTS, then MIXED MEDIA. When you find her name click on it and several of her paintings will appear -select any one of them to be taken directly to her artspan website.

THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE for author and artist Jo Ann Brown-Scott is http://www.epiphanysfriends.com

JO’S CREATIVE EPIPHANY BLOG – If you would like to follow Jo’s Blog, go to: www.thecreativeepiphany.wordpress.com

On this blog site you will find archives of all previous posts, including many posts about the noteworthy YEAR LONG CANVAS challenge – nicknamed the YLC – about working on one particular canvas for an entire year. Photos included of course.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT – Jo is proud to announce that for the second time in the past few years she has been selected to contribute a painted violin to the annual Painted Violin Fundraising Event for the Denver Youth Artists Orchestra.

For more information go to – www.paintedviolin.com or www.dyao.org

Pictured below is Jo’s previous violin from the 8th Annual Fundraiser for the DYAO titled SCHEHERAZADE. There is more information about this event any my first violin in Jo’s blog archives.

Year Long Canvas #13 – The Knowing That Comes With Darkness

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

YLC #13 copyright Jo Ann Brown-Scott, not yet titled

Another quote from Rumi, 13th century poet and scholar – Everyone does this in different ways. Knowing that conscious decisions and personal memory are much too small a place to live, every human being streams in at night into the loving nowhere, or during the day, in some absorbing work.

For those of you who have been following this saga – thank you. I wish I could provide you with startling changes on a weekly basis but that seems too ambitious. It is a gradual, relatively slow, often not-so-eventful journey that YLC and I share. She is far more patient than I. She has everything to gain and nothing to lose. I, however, agonize over each and every change and although I often say that the canvas tells me what to do, sometimes she is maddeningly silent.

But today, no question about it, she screamed at me for drama.

The purple sun that many people took an instant “shine” to (pardon the humor) and that I was so in love with 2 weeks ago, now leaves me cold – a shocking thing for a sun to have to admit. So I have made changes to that upper left corner of the composition….and the sun is obliterated. No more sun flares, no more daily rising in the east and no more celebratory, spectacular western sun setting to garner applause and clinking of wine glasses in that corner of the composition. Maybe I over-reacted – but maybe not. I just cannot mourn every single thing that disappears. I believe that even the art Buddha would agree.

We still have the other sun however – sitting all fried-eggish behind the horizontal slats – that one I still like….but probably not for long.

So purple sun has been replaced with approaching night, if that is how you choose to interpret it. It amuses me sometimes to see a landscape behind the slatted lines, sun above, colorful hillside village below, suggestive of Mexico perhaps – Puerto Vallarta – and now night on its way, but I am not so hung up on that image that I am going to preserve it forever. If I had to make a prediction, I would say the final result of this painting will be totally non-objective and wildly abstract….because I am heading in that direction already. I am yearning for less whimsy and more drama. I will end this year with some serious art.

See the little black parts I added in a few places along the lower far right side? Very small but important. See the magenta coming over on top of the new black area? Also very important – because you cannot just add a huge black area and not integrate it into the composition. It has to work well and mesh with the other colors. See the scratch marks in the new black? I wanted a texture – not just solid dead black.

It is not even mid-summer yet, and still a long way to travel. If you have the time to go back into my archives and re-visit the first couple gestures made on the naked YLC, then you do realize we have come a long way, speaking as an evolutionary reference. This journey won’t be over until March 10th, 2015 when I can let the YLC retire so she can just hang out on some wall in peace. When that day comes I guarantee some glasses will be raised at some type of crazy-art celebration.

As of today, I am really looking forward to that. It cannot come too fast for me.

“This Being Human is a Guest House” – Rumi

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some monetary awareness comes, as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

RUMI, 13th Century Poet and Scholar

Sometimes I wonder how I would have managed to paint if the context of my life had been different…if things had been less to my liking in my life, would I somehow have struggled to rise above it and paint anyway? Would I still have been a painter, or maybe even been a better painter, if I had been forced to deal with more obstacles, dysfunction and disorder? Do I have the determination and drive to be a painter no matter what, or must I have all conditions favorable in order to be my most creative self?

I have painted, actually, through many misfortunes, if I stop to think about it, but I saw them as temporary and surmountable. I consider myself fortunate indeed in that regard. Some would go so far as to say that my life has been hard, and have told me so, but I think it has merely been a life. Everyone has a story – I know of no one who gets off without being beaten down, scarred or broken.

I follow a blog on WordPress written by a lost and lonely fellow who cannot seem to work his way to the safety of dry land but continues to nearly drown in his pool of self pity. I feel very badly for him. I wonder when he will discover that he is the single one person on earth who can pull himself out of that situation and open up his future to a new path? We are all responsible for our own survival. No warriors of happiness are ever going to ride in on horseback and storm the walls to your city, to save the day and bestow happiness upon you. Don’t wait for that to happen. For god’s sake do something now for yourself. Rolling around in the muck, wallowing in it for an eternity is not working for you.

I do not happen to believe, either, that artists must be depressed and lonely, unfulfilled and angry to do profound work and be taken seriously. But I do think that, like actors, adversity can be used as a tool while acting or painting, adding depth to the performance or the composition. Consciously or not, it seems that certainly your particular adversity will work its way into whatever you are creating, whether that be art or music, poetry, pottery, novels, design – because it requires that you dig deeper. So do dig deeper if you are going to milk it for whatever it is worth. And in the digging experience you will find your way through the mess and come out on the other side. The larger problems in life must be dug through – you have to “go in” rather than around. Skirting around only makes the healing a longer and more difficult journey and often leaves you just lost with no destination at all. Learn about yourself in the process and OWN your part – your responsibility – in the adversity. The you will be a better person for it and on your way to a better place.

I believe the life context that has always surrounded me, while fluctuating wildly at times, was always still viewed by me as workable, and that is a big factor in my artistic progress through the decades of my life. My decades have ebbed and flowed with the good, the bad and the ugly – I have not always been gifted with smooth sailing. Some people ask, when shit happens, why me? I always wonder why they thought they were so special. Bad stuff does happen to good people, as the book of a similar title explained. Why would I or anyone else be exempt? But for me, at the base of it all is a bedrock of faith in a world that I have consistently found to be both astounding and bursting with positive potential. I see the glass as more than half full.

Why am I on this subject tonight? I have no idea – well yes I do – I see a lot of friends struggling and I wish I could help. But I will just say that when life brings you those “character building” experiences, then accept the challenge and prove that your character is in fact going to be made stronger from it all…..easier said than done, but workable.

Year Long Canvas #12 – SheTakes a Whimsical Turn

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

YLC #12, copyright Jo Ann Brown-Scott, not yet titled

“You breathe; new shapes appear, and the music of a desire as widespread as Spring begins to move like a great wagon. Drive slowly, some of us walking alongside are lame!” Quote from Rumi, born in 1207, Afghanistan

Of course it has everything to do with my mood. The day was gorgeous, took a long walk, ate some great food, listened to some upbeat music and there we were – arrived at a brand new place from the scariest storm experience of my life just 2 days ago (see the previous blog about Mutha Nature).

Let the games begin….

Lots of minor changes were made, but larger ones too, such as Lady Magenta making an appearance, dancing across everything just for pure fun, and a second (or third?) sun showed up in the unexpected sun color of purple….that’s what you call artistic license, but of course you knew that. I first took artistic license when I was in kindergarten, and teacher instructed us to finger-paint a tree. My tree was purple and she had an absolute fit, being the realist that she was. Even at that young age I knew she was dead wrong – how could she know anything at all about art history and object to a purple tree!? I have been getting her back ever since, sinking at least one “artistic license” thing in painting after painting for many decades now.

I am here to tell you that abstract art does not have to be profound and serious. Since I am working on this canvas for a solid year, I felt free to be light-hearted and free spirited. I can always get dark and brooding at some future point if I so desire. The changes made in this work session were begun with an eye for balance. The upper left area needed some action to be weighed against all the color and motion in the upper right. What to do, what to do. Circles seem to be a repetitive feature, so I thought I might just capitalize on that. Another sun, in PURPLE, could get attention. Not tooooo much attention, however, or the focal point on the right side would be severely compromised. Where is Homare when I need him? I am going to have to fly by the seat of my own pants this summer.

The changes made today were accomplished in less than an hour, and I used my fingers while wearing a latex glove. I seldom use paint brushes anymore – preferring plastic palette knives and oddball kitchen tools like a plastic BBQ sauce “mop”, scrapers and other stuff I find. I often use the dried acrylic paint that has globbed around the top of the paint tube, picking it off and pushing it onto the composition for texture – you can see one of those in about dead center of this painting, sticking out almost like a button. I love bumps and wrinkles, and I like to use acrylic very thickly but I also love to thin it down with lots of water and paint like a watercolorist which is how I first learned to paint. For Homare’s classes in advanced contemporary art I used purely paint, without any exotic collage papers or mixed media techniques, or matt medium to build up a textural affect. I am a mixed media artist at heart but I wanted to go back to my roots and see what happened there. That was a good decision because I have enjoyed it and found that I am still able to paint without any of my favorite bells and whistles. The method in my madness of returning to the classroom was to see what I was made of – to rediscover my earliest training. Doing that could only be for the good, I thought.

The YLC has a journey ahead. She will be thick with paint by mid-Fall and difficult to deal with. Unruly and short-tempered from all the indecision and abuse she has endured. She will have screamed at me to leave her alone. Making anything good happen will be a huge challenge, because everything that has gone before will have been sacrificed and lost and I will mourn those versions. I will be sick and tired of re-inventng her. She will be fed up with me as well. It will be like any other relationship!

But of course you probably knew all that.

The Force of Mutha Nature

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Well it’s been a wild Memorial weekend ride around the Denver area, and it’s only Sunday noon as I write this. This week, by some otherworldly twist of fate (twist being the operative word here) I found myself in two of the exact and most threatening locations where funnel clouds were spotted around the city, just days apart. How strange.

I never say that I don’t get out much – I do get out a lot – I am all over the place actually, driving and doing stuff from Boulder, 45 minutes to the north to Evergreen and Conifer in the mountains west of Denver and then twenty minutes south of the city where I live. Every north, south, east and west direction has been under the assault of Mutha Nature. We have had a session of turbulent skies bringing walls of rain so dark that you cannot see what is going on around you when you are driving in them, hail ranging from marble to almost softball size bringing severe damage, wind and flash floods all resulting in many insurance adjustments. I like weather drama but this is over the top. The 2 funnel clouds I found myself directly under – one while having lunch with a friend in the Cherry Creek area ( where the waiter asked us if we would like to go to the basement and we, for some crazy giggly reason, was it the Sangria? – declined) – and the other being an enormous, dense black storm cell wall of water I actually drove through as my cell phone was screaming an alarm to me to “TAKE COVER IMMEDIATLY! – never actually got their funnel acts together enough to do anything more than wave around in the sky in a serpentine tail, trying to touch ground. I saw them on the news. If I had known what was over me I might not have been able to keep a grip on myself.

I have never driven through such a storm as I did in the second experience – I could not pull over, I could not stop, because cars would have hit me in that process since none of us could see the lines in the road or what was ahead. There were no possible shelters. I had no idea, when my excruciatingly loud cell phone alarm sounded whether I was driving further into the center of the storm action or if I was lucky enough to be driving out of it – the car radio told me next to nothing, thanks a lot. Luckily I was soon going to be driving west, up the canyon to Conifer, so I knew that when that exit came, things would improve….but barely. Tornados just do not happen in steep canyons and mountain areas….I have been told. However the rain had created an actual river coming down the canyon highway, so deep I was afraid my engine would stall out since the car was making waves as I drove.

When I finally arrived in Conifer and we turned on TV the weather map showed the area I had driven through was the very middle of a gigantic storm cell containing funnel clouds, slowly moving north and east away as I turned west into the canyon. I had been directly under that phenomenon for about 8 miles. I was shaking. My friend, who had been a car or two ahead of me but out of sight, poured me a vodka shot. He seemed fine – I was not. It took us a while to laugh.

The outdoor decks, flagstone terrace and steps, ground and rocks on my friend’s property in Conifer were covered with what the hail damage had caused a couple days before – it looked like chopped broccoli but was actually shredded healthy green pine needles and branches and pine cones – the trees had been mauled. They looked pathetic. It was overwhelming to see such destruction – and that was just the yard. The house and other buildings will all need new roofs. A skylight is broken and leaking. The Ping-Pong sized hail pounded the place for a full half hour.

OK so does all of this adrenalin-fueled fear go away, after you realize you are still alive? No. I can still feel all of that experience sitting here as I type. Sun is out, sort of, but I am right back in it in my mind.

So what am I going to do with myself? Well of course I ‘m going to paint.

We shall see what that brings…..the YLC is talking to me again.

Year Long Canvas #11, and a thread of artistic wisdom.

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. Sydney J. Harris

Today’s last class was bittersweet, since many of us are not attending any classes for the summer, and although 3 months is a freeing and enticing stretch of time it is also a deep void to fill. And filling the shoes of Homare Ikeda ( http://www.homareikeda.com ) is an impossibly tall order – he is a gifted instructor; wise yet playful, firm in his experience yet always open to new ideas, serious about his art yet secure enough to be whimsical at times, free spirited yet always grounded in the process. Having access to the mind of the master on a weekly basis will be greatly missed.

He spoke to us at the beginning of class about artistic dedication and what a luxury and privilege it is to be able to afford the time and have the talent to paint well. Not just to paint but to paint well. He said we are truly fortunate and should never take it lightly. He said, in so many words, that we should not squander that privilege. We should not deny it or disrespect it or take it for granted. It must be honored and given expression. But he was careful to add, after several minutes on that subject, that with summer at our doorstep, he had one final assignment for us….

We were instructed to PLAY. We were told that our summer must be spent in a sort of artistic abandon – we should give ourselves the freedom and the fun of being loose, experimental, random and playful. We should absolutely have fun this summer. We have been given permission and instructed to do so.

Well alrighty then. I am all for that. Hope I have not forgotten how….to relax, to play and be silly. To be young again in spirit. To make stupid mistakes. To learn from them. To make other mistakes. Then to occasionally create something brilliant, born of enjoyment and fun.

When the class began I had not been inside a classroom, as a student, for several decades. I had just come from 3 years of teaching mixed media to adults in northern California, moving back to Denver after 6 years away, and I felt very strongly that it was time to get my own mojo working again. To paint with serious intention and dedication. To find a class and an instructor that were a good fit for me. To see if I was on the right track as I began the next chapter – the remainder – of my painting career. It was either luck or intuition or both that drew me to Homare’s class. His assignment to me of the YEAR LONG CANVAS project was, in retrospect, perfection. It demanded that I slow down, take my painting to the level of a meditation, think more, sometimes think less, TRUST myself more and promise that I would follow the process through until it was time for it to be over. I still have a long way to go, and I don’t enjoy painting in really hot weather, not even in air conditioning. I would love to take the summer off, not from painting entirely, but from painting any more on the YLC. But I will not do that.

In spite of the assignment to PLAY for the summer, I have the YLC here staying with me 24/7 in a corner of my studio. I am her vacation retreat. September will come soon enough and I will have to take her to class with me and reveal what has happened to her over the summer break. Think how it might feel to have to read a great book over the time of an entire year – when you are dying to race ahead to the end but you have to pace yourself and allow only a bit to be revealed at a time. What if babies took 12 months instead of 9? How about a year’s worth of working on the same recipe; refining and tweaking and altering until you lose your bleeping mind. A year is enough time to fall completely in and out of the creative mood at least a dozen times – alternating love/hate feelings – and each time you have to find a way to get yourself geared up and hyped up and ready to move forward again…..only to lose that momentum and speed and focus again and again and again.

Of course there is a much larger life lesson here about CHANGE. We hesitate to make changes in our lives based upon fear – fear that the newer will not be as comfortable or as satisfying as was the previous status quo. Fear that we have moved into the unknown at the total expense and obliteration of the known – fear that the life changes we are about to make will not work out and we cannot go backwards and get back again to where we were. It is my personal experience, however, that carefully considered change usually does bring improvement and enhancement with its evolution, and the result is better than expected. This is based upon knowing myself and trusting myself.

So this week I have done just a little work on the canvas and maybe you will notice it and maybe you will not. A slight bit more of purple was added in strategic areas – in about the 10 o’clock area, if you use the clock guideline. Also just a little more of it at about 4 o’clock, drifting over the orange. The purple was added for balance. Next time I work on her I will be gutsy-er, and if you are bordering on boredom, have faith, big change will come. That will be painful but no guts no glory. And I am supposed to trust that the glory will be reincarnated as a new idea every bit as successful and appealing as it was before. I love the quote I have included in this post about CHANGE – and another quote I heard once that says that to request no change at all requires great change in itself!