For several weeks now, I've painted in little snippets, grabbing a few minutes here and a few minutes there catch-as-catch-can.
Today I didn't paint.
Or did I …
I certainly 'painted' internally, by which I mean I participated nourishingly in facets of the creative process. Using a metaphorical backhoe, I cleared just enough space for two of my sisters and their husbands to sleep at our house on wedding weekend (we'll be in absentia ourselves, at a hotel in Boston!), a task that offered chances to interact with completed paintings, piles of collage paper, boxes of pastels, a bin of high-flow paints, a tissue-paper storage box, yogurt containers with water and brushes in them, and a pile of canvases I scored at a September neighborhood give-away. All part of painting, all part of my creative adventure, all feeding what will soon flow from my brush in one form or another.
Artist friend Jen said much the same thing back in the summer:
Organizing is … something I can do when I can't paint. If I'm too tired, unmotivated, cranky or whatever to actually make art, I can still get things in tip-top shape for when I am ready once more. Sometimes I will just gesso boards and leave them out to dry, where they will whisper to me on another day. Other times I will purge old drawings and cut them into bits and pieces for collage materials. On a really bad day, I'll scrape paint off the floor. But to me, it all counts as part of the process. It keeps me in the studio, putting in my time, waiting for the muse to stomp in and demand attention.
And now I am off to paint. Or maybe alphabetize my art books.
Here's what I 'painted' today, along with photos of earlier stages of these masterpieces:
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| work in progress, Green Room |
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| completed diptych 'painting,' Green Room Perks Up #1 |
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| completed 'painting,' Green Room Perks Up #2 |
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| work in progress, Lemon Drop Room |
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| completed 'painting,' Lemon Drop Room Brightens |
