16x20 l Oil on Panel

Week 15

Alex wanted to do a painting of a Swan tonight - this one wasn't my first choice nor my last. However, it didn't strike me as dynamic or worthwhile. 

Occasionally in deciding pieces, I am just jumping in, hoping it's a good pick. When I do that, sometimes I find the creeping feeling coming over me of falling in love- not just with the subject, but strokes, the entirety of the feeling and the experience in painting together. There are other times though I don't feel connected until much later. This particular piece was done so quickly I felt almost like I had whiplash when Alex told me stop we're done after only 30 minutes. Generally, it's the timer or Alex that tells us to stop. Good thing too because I would certainly take the evening to continue to work and work, and probably work the painting to death. That point in life which you need to just Move On is elusive to me as a perfectionist. Life has a way of being perfect when it is just as it is. Without something contriving it or judging it. 

We actually painted this one 2 nights before and I didn't want to post it because I just didn't know what I felt about it. I think now more so that I was afraid to not be spectacular or meaningful. Because the last few paintings I've been deeply meaningful to me, it was exceptionally hard to choose a piece I thought was simple and not very emotive. It's like me to always think I need to make a grand gesture. And generally that's what keeps me from doing any thing because I'm concerned it must be the biggest and the best that I can do to do anything at all. And there is an act of letting go. Of being with yourself when you are just being. The stillness and importance of being ok with not being highly spectacular or important- but doing the work of living and creating because you must to live. 

The work of those that create is to create each day without fail, good, bad, serene and spectacular- just because we must. That is the important work.