Dazzle

The ability to dazzle has three ingredients:

1. You have to dazzle yourself first and do what you did not know you could do;
2. The dazzled must be familiar with your old work or it will just seem normal; and
3. The mystery ingredient.

There was one painting at my art opening in Seattle that garnered the most attention. It was Pearls. with in the first two hours of the show opening 5 people had expressed interest in buying it. Why? I dazzled them.

It was the first of the series and the first time I used gold so much in a painting. It had sumi black all over it which is a color I never used before and it turned out gorgeous and mysterious at the same time. It was also the first to have a story written on the side of the painting. It was a breakthrough painting and everyone knew it . Even those who had never seen my work before. It was a perfect painting, and it was the first perfect painting of the series.  Therefore it had the most power.

The first one is always the best. then you just try and recreate it. then it is instantly not as good as the first one. You have to keep reinventing yourself every single day to keep fresh. You cannot get good at what you do or you will be a hack. You can feel hack.

Every once in awhile you will do a painting without knowing all the places it will go. It has to paint itself. no ego allowed. Then you can dazzle.

Well it is true

You can do anything you can think up. Do you think that is true?  Well it is. You just have to figure it out. You don’t even need to know all the steps. Just start moving in that direction.

People get paralyzed in one spot and think something has to happen first. You need to get enough money or time or the right person must find you. Forget it. You have the ability to move. Look at Joni Erikson Tada. She is really paralyzed and look at what she managed to do, Most of us are only paralyzed in our minds. You only have to look in the direction of where you want to go and you will start going there. Like a constantly moving line, our minds just start going there.

So don’t look at bad things because you cannot look without going there. You might think “OH I am just being realistic.” Oh yeah, you just made yourself go there.

I had this dream last night. The dream was about a man who came up to me and said, “Everything you need is right here. You don’t have to go searching all over. Everything is right here.  Just look and you will find it.”

Well that is true.

Dishes

I am going to do a line of dessert plates with my images on them. then I want to do a whole set of dinnerware and call it sharikaware. I am telling you this because I dont even know how to do it but I am going to walk toward the light.

There are so many possibilites to print the plates up. China is a big one , and New York . They cost way way way to much to manufacture one by one so Have to go to mass production. So I am wondering if just doing this by looking at the internet is a good thing or hire a professional. Well with my website it certainly was worth the money to hire a pro so maybe I just answered by own question.

The great thing about being an artist is you own the rights to your images even if you sell the painting. That is so nice otherwise everybody would be stealing ideas all the time. that said I do steal ideas all the time but I rework them to make them mine. So I guess it isn’t stealing it is reusing.

Don’t you want to see the dinnerware right now? I mean yesterday. Don’t you just want to see them and then go to this amazing dinner party with all these interesting people. Well don’t you??? I will tell you what the pro says.

Living

Most artists I know live with great exuberance. I cant even think of one that does not. By that I mean that they drink in everything that comes their way good or bad. It is an artists nature to use everything for their work. It is impossible to remain outside looking in.

This makes for two hard things. We seem crazy at times to others and we get our feelings hurt a lot. But that is a very small price to pay for being able to absorb what you have been given. Artists are the safest people I know because they are the most vulnerable.

When I don’t like someone else’s art I never never tell them. They are only doing what they need to do to live and I am nobody to crush a spirit. You do not need a tough skin to be an artist. It needs to be pliable.

I am just trying to give any reader a little insight into the world of a job that picks you. An artist does not decide to be an artist. You can’t not do it. So be gentle with those who live in this place of creativity. They are tender souls just  breathing. If you don’t like something , just remember that the world would be a very different place without any visual arts. all of them are a gift whether you like it or not.

Just For Me

I did some paintings with the idea that these were just for me. I painted what I wanted to look at every second and this is what came out of it. It was a freeing feeling to just paint like I was on a desert island and nobody but me would see them.  I looked at them when I was done and realized something.

The real me is color crazy. I could not get enough color on the canvas. I think the results are wild abandon paintings and like being here in this space right now. I need energy to put out and I need the paintings to help me do it. We are working together to build a life and I do want a big life so I have to paint a lot.

I am getting a picture of where I want to go with this art life. What I want is to sell so many paintings that we can go anywhere and paint. I do want to spend a lot of time painting other places besides France. Bali comes to mind and Italy and also Chile. And Mexico and New York. I want to spend time in Venice painting. That is the agenda for the next 10 years and I hope I can do all of them. Then I want to stay home and be a person who gives every penny she made away before she dies.

What do you want to do before you die?

error: Please do not copy.