You don’t need to have the idea in place before you begin. Most great ideas come in the middle of playing around and then you get a bead.
I call getting a bead when the smattering of a great idea is starting. I can feel it. Everything feels meaningless and then suddenly it is right there. The way to go, the reason for this painting to live, the big idea the right color , the right direction.
When this happens everything else goes away and I am home. I do not want to leave there ever because I am in the place that is the reason I even try in the first place. Flow. It is flowing out. It is telling me what to do beyond my usual knowledge.
I used to paint with charcoal and varnish because it was cheap. What a mess and probably toxic as all get out but it worked.
I once sold a painting that was made of charcoal and varnish and masonite from a dumpster. I sold it in a coffeehouse.
When that happened I knew anything was possible. anything. People don’t care what you use they only care if they like it. They also don’t give a ding dong about where you went to school. They could not care less.
I have had people call me us and want to hang out with me to pick my brain for one thing or another. Mostly it is how do you sell your work. How do you break in.
Some of these people have gone to Ivy League schools. what a joke, They think I have fairy dust and can help them. They think I have the answer.
I do. The answer is nobody cares where work comes from . they only care if they like it. YOu are good enough right now.
There also is another key. If you sell a lot of things when you are just a kid you will make it. That seems to be the other thing. It happens when you aren’t even trying to sell it.
Poems
Recently my good no great friend was going to have a sixtieth birthday. This is pretty traumatic so I was going to throw her a party. I usually do ceremonies for big deal birthdays but I had nothing new to offer. I never do the same one twice so I have to keep reinventing the wheel. Then at four in the morning I had this vision of a painting of a woman looking down at a big dining table with a large window at the end of the dining room. The painting spoke to me and I got up and wrote a poem in about 3 minutes about it.
Then I wrote five more in a sort of stream of consciousness.
IN the real morning I reread them and found them good so I thought I would make a six course meal and serve up one poem with each course. That is how that happened. Everything worked out well she liked it so that was good.
But it was funny as I forgot I used to want to be a poet when I was young. I actually went to a college councelor and told them either Poet or artist. The counselor told me that a better choice was actress so I signed up for a drama class. Everyone acted so insane in the drama class that I dropped out the next day. I hate acting.
So I chose art. But till just last month I forgot that I adore poetry and used to write all the time.
Can you even believe that a person could forget something like that. But I did and now I remember.
So the whole next show I am working on right now right this very second is going to have a poem for each painting.
negative space
My husband found out recently that he has ADD, He spent all his life thinking he was so slow (which he is). But it is because he is overloaded with too much at on time in his brain to process. He slows down so he can focus.
To make his life easier we have to par the house down so it does not have a lot of distracting overwhelming things . things have to be organized and put away. there has to be negative space in his life to breathe.
All these things are good for everyone.
That is why it is so calming to look at the ocean or a mountain range or the desert that goes for miles and miles.
To design your life with a balance of quiet and emotional space then you too will think better. I am so glad to have this challenge in my life. Tiny house or no you can make quiet space. This video attached to this blog is the innermost house. a tiny house with both of those things.
What you have
If you spent even one minute a day focusing on what you don’t have then you will never have enough. If you look at what you do have you will always have enough.
There is a radio show on NPR that is about making something good to eat out of whatever is currently in your fridge. People call up and say oh I have peanut butter and squash and soy milk. what can I make. The woman on the show makes up something hilarious and that is the show.
But it is a good exercise to do.
Most of our waking life is bombarded with ads implying that we are in need of something or other. The result is you feel deprived.
Here we are living in the lap of luxury and we feel deprived.
If you have dirt you can grow food. If you have legs you can walk and go get a job. If you have one friend you are rich.
You just need that attitude.
I have been writing my Dads story of his life and many times he told me of how he used what he had to make something. Even though his parents were immigrants and had to overcome all sorts of obstacles they managed to focus on what they had. They had dirt so they grew things and fed themselves and sold the rest.
We become lazy and uncreative when we are too comfortable.
It is better to be poor and creativie than rich and lazy.
And we are all too rich for our own good.
Relationships
Nothing in life has any meaning whatsoever unless you have good relationships.
I don’t care what you have accomplished, in the end you take nothing with you but all the relationships you had.
How can you take them with you after you die you might wonder. Well you have to give an account for your life and do you think God will want to know how big your house was or how creative you were and all the buildings you built or the books you wrote. Do you think He cares about that.
All that stuff is perishable. He will however want to know if you had great relationships with the people he gave you. He will also want to have had a relationship with Him too.
You don’t want to meet God for the first time after you are dead. Then it is too late. If He doesn’t know you then, you will spend the rest of your eternity alone.
They say solitary confinement is horrible in jail. That you do tend to go crazy with loneliness.
And that is only for a little while. that is only a taste.
I was thinking how the first commandment is Love the Lord with your whole heart soul and mind.
Just like when you love anybody really. You love to know all about them and what they think, you are loyal and trustworthy and committed. They are never boring to be around.
Well God is like that too.
This might sound very simplistic but it is so profound that you could swim in this one thought for a few hours. And that one thought changes everything.