Follow your bliss...: It's important to "play"

Sunday, July 20, 2008

It's important to "play"

I can't stress enough how important it is to play around with medium and surface...and sometimes when it's not going well, to say "fuck it" and push it further...this little painting is on a piece of acid free mat board scrap that is approximately 3 x 2, so it's tiny...I made it on my lunch hour at work...sometimes I do this out of necessity, not just to create something, but to work out something, to put distance from work by "playing" solves lots of problems, clears the head of clutter...as you know, I have a thing for yellow...and I love purple and yellow together...I splashed and saturated, let dry, damn near gave up on it, then when the surface was at the right dampness (this takes practice to know just "when" to dip in again, I'm sorry that I can't really tell you "when", but trial and error is a fact of art making), I splashed and dashed some more and then walked away...I fooled about with it later after it was dry with some colored pencil at home, but decided to leave it...it was fine as is...it is what it is and I like it...

Do you remember this piece? River of Fallen Stars has sold at the Contemporary Gallery this week.

It's always bittersweet to sell a piece...especially one that is so close to my heart...they all are special during and after the creation process, but some of them are "favorites" and possess pieces of me that are deeply personal...but these pieces of me are elusive, it's pure creativity, it's emotional, it's spiritual...in spite of her busy surface where I struggled with process, deciding what to leave in, what to leave out, suffering through trial and error, there is peace there...it's like lying on a blanket in my yard and looking up at the Milky Way in the summer sky, looking for shooting stars, while listening to Beethoven's 9th in my head...this is my bliss on paper...it always amazes me how it gets there from here...

It's an honor to have someone part with their hard earned money to buy my artwork, and it is always my hope that the buyer will treasure the piece as much as I do, and more because they see something in there that belongs to them, they can read their bliss...

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Me and Fibromyalgia...the good news is, it's not going to kill me.

I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2007 after years of being told my illness was all in my head. My Fibro is everyday fatigue with body aches, mostly tolerable, but when I have a flare-up, which can be triggered by stress, hormones, or being over tired from over-doing it, I get the full body pain, including chest pains (yes, these are scary, like an elephant standing on my chest.) Thankfully, it doesn't hurt to take a breath, but I feel breathless, I just do yoga and breathing exercises to stretch and breathe to ease through the worst of it, NSAIDs help to cut the pain, and naps are always a necessary thing when needed (but hard to do while at the day job!) It's a balancing act to manage, I take advantage of the good days, lay low on the bad ones, and very often, push through in spite of the bad days...some mornings I wish I could stay in bed, but I'm glad that I get up and about, very often 'the kinks' work themselves out. I refuse to take the recommended pharmaceutical band-aids on the market, I tried one once, and I don't like feeling like a zombie. I keep active with my creativity, I think that's the key to my overcoming this obstacle every day...and I have my Fred and our son, five cats, and one dog named Max.