Monday, December 5, 2016

Emerging

Ironic that autumn leaves have dropped from the trees, darkness is leaving later every morning and coming earlier every afternoon … and yet I feel like I'm waking up from a long hibernation into a personal vernal regeneration. I sure haven't been asleep for the past 10+ weeks—anything but!, but I've been almost completely at a remove from my usual studio life. Now I seem to be blinking my eyes and stretching my limbs, looking around with a sense of newness.

I'm tender. Vulnerable. At the mercy of the elements.

A warm wind caresses me in the form of a comment Jane Davies made in response to a classmate's Lesson 10 post:

I rarely see overworked pieces in a class. If you aren't happy with a piece, then it is under-worked. You can only move forward (when working with physical materials as opposed to digital media, which is why I think we have more to gain from the challenge of physical materials). This is part of the process: it's like life—you don't get do-overs, so you have to keep going with what you have. 

Thank you, Jane! That was just the right message for me in this moment. I was getting precious—AGAIN!—even with colorful little 3x4" bits of paper meant to be adventures and experiments. Your words opened the door for me to move forward.

I wonder where this will go next.

tiny canvas #2, work in progress





4 comments:

carol edan said...

First, thanks for sharing Jamie's comment. I often feel that pieces are overworked,and sense a brick wall and can't move ahead. Your piece has bright colors and a positive direction,like new growth. Love the inverted black shapes.
Here I am,in bed,6:15 am, writing on Fire tablet and looking at the image on my phone. Soon off to class!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Thanks, Carol. Fun that you picked up on those inverted black shapes—they tickled my fancy, too!

Sheila said...

Lovely, bright. I see abstracted flowers, stamen, leaves. Joyful :)

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Thanks, Sheila. This painting is a little snippet of contentment and joy and peace for me—I actually painted it a number of days before posting, and the days since have been more at the frazzled and disgruntled and discordant end of the spectrum. I love having this talisman to return to.

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