Month: March 2010

Momentum is your best friend when you are doing any project — from weeding the yard to writing a book. I find momentum in different places.

If I get a phone call from the gallery saying they sold a few paintings. voila, momentum. If another artist says they want me to talk to them about their work, momentum. If I finish a painting and it turns out beautiful, momentum.

So fundamentally, anything positive gets me going.

On the other hand. momentum stops when I don’ t have a deadline. If the phone doesn’t ring. Nobody needs me to get that to them right away. People get me from Point A to Point B. I need a job, a place to go, a person to deliver to. I am not an island. Good grief, I am a city and I need my big city to thrive.

You have to know what kind of things make you move. Some people need peace and quiet and nobody calling them. Some thrive on the island. You have to figure out when you work the best.
photo by mikebaird

If you think about something a lot and feel guilty for not doing it, you should do it. If you sigh in your heart about something. you should do it. The leap from Point A to Point B takes total courage. Courage is 100 percent painful and scary and you will want to do anything else in the universe than have courage.

I know there is something in everyone’s life that is a secret thing that you think about but do not do. Why do you think about it? Why have those thoughts at all? Nobody knows them, so who cares? I think I think I think God cares. And if he cares we should care. Nothing is easy.

But here is the ironic thing. Thinking about what you should do and not doing it will torture you, too. So you really can’t get any peace. When you sigh, when I sigh it is one’s spirit trying to get out. I am going to nurture my creativity and feed her till she can get strong enough to get out.

Today is a spacey blog but I think it is not a waste of your time to read it.

The most difficult thing for my husband is to do anything I talk about in my blog. That is because he thinks differently than me. Most creative type books are written by women. The ones that aren’t are totally business related. Go make the company bigger and better. Men need to have a one track goal.

Women, on the other hand, are more likely to pursue the more abstract thoughts of why are we doing what we do.  Men have responsibilities and women have less pressing ones.  It is so hard to see men be in this place of having no time to consider these things. It’s always off to work and go go go come home and crash and do it over the next day.  Everybody only gets a short time to live and it is important to consider what you do in a deep way.

If I had one wish it would be that men could spend one luxurious half hour a day working on these issues. That is why I am doing this blog. It is short and easy and if there is something to glean then please glean it.  The people you love will be directly enriched by anything unique you have to offer them. The people you love are starving for that very part of you that needs to fly.

When I am doing a painting, I always make sure a put one irritating thing in it. One eye a little too big or lips a little off, or ears too high on the head. I do this to make it human. No face is symmetrical, so it will make you feel odd to see one that is.

That goes for more than faces. When I decorate a room I do the same thing. Rooms that interior designers do are many times perfect and cold. You dont want to live in them. They have no energy. But one or two quirky things in it can make it feel welcoming. It also adds interest. Your eye will go to the off thing immediately. Dont move it , enjoy it, it lets the room and painting breathe. Take that wild lamp out of the room and the room sighs and waits for something else interesting to come in so it can sing again. This is one area in life we do not have to have everything matching and perfect.

You want to love your paintings and rooms and photographs- put that one odd thing in and you will see them come alive.

We moved our big bed into a tiny room. It is only 8 feet wide and 14 feet long. very small and it has short ceilings. My challenge is to make this the sweetest room in the house.

I bought a lamp from McKenzie Childs that is way wild. Lots of colors and a parrot and a big rock and amazingly unusual lampshade. When I first bought this lamp I thought how wild it is. Everyone who looked at it at first laughed and said how amazing it was or how ugly it was. Now months later after they are used to it they have been changed by it. It is no longer wild-bad but wild-wonderful. Now other lamps seem boring compared to it. Even my mother, who laughed out loud when I first got it, now loves it. I mean loves it because it gives her joy.

I am telling you this lamp story because that is the way we are, We hate anything new and we cannot see it at first. People thought the Eiffel Tower was ugly when it was first built. They were horrified.  That is how it goes with new things. Do not give up if people hate your work at first. They have to grow into it sometimes. This is true of enormously great new works. You need time to accustom your eyes to new things.