Musings on liking your own work

All the Colors & Paths #1, at Altered Aesthetics'
Straight Trippin' Juried Show
February 28-March 28, 2013

If you don't like your own work, how can you: 

1.  expect anyone else to like it -- ever; 
2.  get pleasure out of its creation; 
3.  want to do anything other than use it for kindling. 

Will you love every piece?

Don't expect to love every piece. Because making art is a journey, there will probably be some odd turns or dead ends:

1. You win inevitably make an awkward and damaging splash or drop the brush or do something that in the cold light of day makes you cringe. Learn from it, and enjoy the pleasure of making art. Forgive your child or your cat if one or both might be the culprit
2. When you get a new paintbrush or color or other piece of equipment, your first experiments might be happy accidents that you love (and sell), noodlings that you will use as reference material, or something to  recycle by painting on the back.
3. Not that this would happen to you, but in my earnest determination to get back to painting after being ill, I put a lot of brown paint in a place where, on reflection, it does not belong. Whether I can bring this painting back to where I hoped it would be, turn it into something entirely new, or trash it, is yet to be determined. What did I learn? When speaking a simple, declarative sentence is unmanageable, I should stay away from paint brushes.

Who is the SpokesArtist?

I am the SpokesArtist for my own art enterprises, each of which is dedicated to making people smile. I have no idea how artists who pour their angst onto their canvases think about liking their own work. 

Creativity: Have paint, will travel

The Great Leafy Bunny
of New Hampshire

Whether you are planning a winter vacation or plotting your summer 2012 adventures, I hope that you are inspired by my friend Rachel Zelkind, who inspires me every time art and travel come together. Bring your gear!

Tall Silo of Iowa

Because I travel often for work and always take paint and paper, I have named my painting kit "The Rachel" in her honor. It  consists of three Daniel Smith Travel Kolinsky brushes, an Arches Paper block (postcard, 7x10 or 9x12), 4 or 5 tiny tubes of watercolor, a small pencil, an eraser, and a pencil sharpener, and it fits nicely into my carry-on. Also, it goes right through TSA security.

It helps that I will only paint indoors and know how to ask the hotel concierge nicely for better light in my room by saying: "I am a painter and a reader, and the only good light for either activity is in the bathroom. Can you help me?" That strategy has not failed yet.

Rachel, on the other hand, paints outside and she is always prepared:

In her car:

"I have in the car a chair of some sort at all times." She also has a three-legged camp stool that can attach a day pack, which can be used for sitting and can also act as a little table. Not surprisingly, she always has a paper palette pad and a spray bottle for water. The rest, she says, "is just a few tubes of paint." The chair, she emphasizes, is a must, and the camp stool can go on walks, which is good, because she hikes.

When traveling in San Miguel, her chair-substitute was an upside down bucket. "It's portable and stuff can be put in and carried. It really makes sense," she says, and it is not uncomfortable. To her, "It looks more natural on the street than sitting in a chair."

Wherever you go, and whatever your art -- Bring Your Gear!!!!