Okay. So here I am in Maine - my last day before heading home to my beloved Masaachusetts. The sun is shinning gloriously, the air is cool and filled with the scents of ocean roses and sea salt.
This morning, as I was still lying in bed I wondered - if I were a realist painter how I would paint the fire in the ocean that was the reflection of the rising sun? I felt grateful that I am indeed not a realist painter and could simply lie back and marvel at the visual mysterious of this earth.
Several days ago I finished reading the book "The Sparrow" by Mary Dorian Russell. I have to take back all that I said. It is so worth reading. It has taken me awhile to digest it all - taken me a while to figure out why I was actually grateful to finish it. I read the interview with the author an d that helped a lot. It is an important book. Here is a quote from Entertainment Weekly - "Smooth storytelling and gorgeous characterization...Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them."
I have learnt this week that I can make great progress on a project when I bring just one. I hope to continue in some way this practice when I am in the studio. Many people are constantly starting new projects because there is a certain thrill in starting something new as opposed to the druggery of trying to bring something to fruition. It is not unlike the thrill of a new relationship, as opposed to the supposed boredom of everyday life. For me the problem is too many ideas, along with the varied and different deadlines that face me on a given day. I realize now after this simple week that my practice of keeping all the projects I am working on out on tables or hanging on my design board while I work on one, may be overwelming me. If I had a large enough studio to keep them all in working mode it might work, or even if I had the room for 2 different design boards. But given the studio I have now I find that I am constantly moving things around to make room for the current, most relevant project. Wih every move and new pile of things I make I find that their state of incompletion ways heavy on me. I know what I have to do and what I want to do, I just don't have the time.
I think that when I return to my studio next week, I will try leaving out only the project I currently have to face for a deadline and a second project I can contemplate. Everything else gets put away or not even started. Jotting done ideas and sketches will be allowed. And of course my 15 minutes a day in my art journal.
This is the current state of my Gustov Klimt needle point kit. Maya Angelou is half read.
And the ocean is calling out to me for a final walk by the water's edge.
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