Sharika Roland

If you live your life worrying about what will happen next to you and how everything in the world will affect YOU and what is the best plan for YOU. You will have a rotten life.
Guaranteed. But if you think what can I do to help out somewhere, Who can I help learn something, How can I benefit my community… Your life will be blessed.
It is like a stagnant pond or a fresh free flowing river.
Every bit of energy your pour out into the world away from you you you will be the very energy that will carry you to a better place.
You will be a river strong and fresh and alive and free.
Today think of 5 ways to flow your talents , gifts and skills out into others to refresh them and you will be surprised how great it feels to let go of that old whirlpool of thinking about you you you all the time. Flow like a river!

Artists sometimes are perceived as illogical thinkers.
That is true. I have never met one yet that was one foot in front of another.
It is hard to be left brainers when you are mostly right brain. My mom told me when I was young that I should never work because I would probably get fired and she was right. I have been fired from a lot of jobs in my youth.
I was a bad waitress and a bad cashier and even a bad sandwich maker.
Everyone has to do something to live but I was bad at everything but creative things.
I can put on a festival, I can think up new ideas all day long and I can paint.
But in every other area I am dead in the water.
I do have a friend that is an artist who is incredible at all things but she is the exception to the rule. She is good with her hands straight across the board. Yes I am referring to Susan Cowan.
But she is unusual.

It is way easier to just give up and be yourself than it is to try and fit a round peg into a square hole.
So here is to all the people out there that have a bent toward the creative . Just do what you are good at and the rest will fall into place. Don’t beat yourself up for not being good at everything. You only need to be good at a couple of things to survive.
We are each made good at something. And that is enough!

There are hundreds of time wasters. But the big three are watching something that is not you. Movies Television and the computer.
I am going to try and limit myself to two hours a day.
Mostly it is on the computer looking at ideas and facebook and writing my blog.
I have heard my husband saw with pride that we do not have cable. or ever T. V. That may be good but we have a computer and that is way more compelling than either of the other two. Put together.
I would say that computers have the addictive quality that video games have. You think well I am writing and doing something so it has a lot of value.
But when you break it down a few minutes on facebook can lead to three hours going all over looking at everything.
So I think I should better use my time painting or talking with a real person. or reading or even cleaning the house.
Two hours a day goes by pretty fast. but at least it is not five hours gone into oblivion!

Artists are not orderly by nature. If you are you are lucky. We get into the zone and nothing seems as important as getting the next thing done so we toss aside everything that is in our way.
I have been known to toss aside people who get in my way which is not a good thing.
creativity is a compelling force and when it calls everything tunes out in my mind.
Then I have to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane.
My studio is a mess with brushes with paint all over them and 15 open bottles of paint. everything is all over.
Sometimes I wish I had an assistant who would stand by me and hand me what I want and then put it away when I am through with it.
But that person has to be me.
Now I am trying to learn to clean as I go. If I use the space between thought and clean up for contemplation it is not so bad and might even help the process. I used to walk down the hall to wash my brushes every 10 minutes when my studio was not by the water source. But now it is right by my hand so I paint pretty fast and maybe I need that time to think. Order is important to control the whirlwind a little and maybe direct it more skillfully.
This is Sunday so I am thinking how God is orderly and how that should apply to me too.
There is so much power in not being a disorganized person. You don’t have to took for anything and you have everything you need when you need it. And that is good.

A client sometimes wants a bigger version of a painting I already did.
This is fun to do as I don’t have to think up the original idea so that is easy but the hard part comes when I have to recreate what I think they like about the first one. Maybe it is the color. Or the look in her eyes or the splotchy layered variation of undercoat.
Well if it is the first two that is pretty doable.
But what is hard is trying to do again the background layers. My technique is so one of a kind that it is difficult to put together the same combination again to get the look.
So to overcome that, I have to do a painting that is better than the first one.
If I do that they wont mind that the layers are not the same .
So even if I do a copy of an old painting it is always going to be unique. I cannot replicate exactly the first one ever again. No never.
And that is the best thing. You should get your own painting done just for you.