Well, That is the Question!

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It is said that it takes two artists to paint a painting.  One to paint the painting, and one to tell the other one when to stop!  I believe this, and this is why…….

I’m a terrible closer!  When I worked in sales, my boss use to tell me, I make a new best friend out of a first time phone call, and I could sell  S*@T  back to a horse!  That was fine then, but this is now, and I now have trouble deciding if my painting is finished or needs to speak to me! .  I know what I want to do, I can see it in my mind, and sometimes that’s all I need, but, sometimes I get to where I thought I wanted to go, and well, now I can’t figure out what comes next.  I always say, when that happens, set the painting aside, and let it speak to you.

Ok, that’s what I say!  Now I’m going to confess, I have an entire studio of paintings all trying to speak at the same time, and now all I hear is a tiny room full of voices all talking at once!  Crazy you say?  Well, there’s that, and then there are still all the voices.  So here is my dilemma…What do you do when all the voices speaking, and now there isn’t any way of figuring out what they are saying, or where they want to go, and what to do next?

Since my tiny studio is off the kitchen with a door into the garage, it becomes a catch-all for just about everything, and everyone in a close proximity to my creativity!  The more cluttered it becomes, the more stressed I get, and the less creative I feel.  And once again, I am unable to decide if I want to continue a painting, or if it’s finished!  More often than not, I turn the light off, and walk away more frustrated, and totally unhappy about the entire process!

Now I’ve decided my studio needs a complete cleaning with yet another reorganization.  I need to downsize my supplies NOW instead of waiting until someone has to pry all these cool supplies out of my cold dead hands!  After all, I’m not using most of them, I have no idea where to look for anything especially after reorganizing, sometimes I’m surprised when I find something I hadn’t realized I even possessed, and my daughter is going to call all my breathing art friends up to come and pick through all the coolest stuff  when I’m gone anyway.    Let me also mention to you not to get to excited, I’m not planning to fade away anytime soon!  You may want to find your own stash, and not hold your breath!

The picture above is a  4″ X 12″ collage of a trumpet player I’m working on in honor of my Trumpet Playing Husband!  We have a home filled with music with, not just a husband playing a trumpet, but both my sons play guitar, and various other instruments.  One of them actually earns a living at it!   Although some might say the painting is finished, I’m not quite pleased with the horn player being greenish.  I think he needs to be a complementary to yellow or orange, and I’m planning to add another layer to break up the dark figure.  Now that I’m writing about it, it seems so simple, and maybe this is my process.  Writing about it, and working through the process on paper (so to speak).  I’m thinking then, it will be finished!

A Little Something Extra…..

I was driving with my soon to be 9-year-old grandson, and my 7-year-old granddaughter yesterday.  Silence was everywhere, (that was unusual), suddenly my grandson asked me if I ever thought of dying!  I replied that I had, but I didn’t see much point in spending too much time on it when there are so many other more interesting things to think about.  I then asked him if he ever spent any time thinking about dying, and he quickly replied No!  I then asked him what he did think about, and he told me marriage.  He’s 9 years old for heaven’s sake!  What about marriage I said?  His reply, kids – three out of control kids!  Oh, I said, you’ll love them anyway, it’s more important to find the right person to spend your life with.  His reply….No problem, I’m going to find a girl on E-Harmony!!!

With that, I thought in spite of being really careful not to get into any territory to advanced for a 9-year-old, I’d better quit while I’m ahead,  because it’s over My Head!  And then there is the 7-year-old taking it all in the backseat, and at that moment I realized – I’M NOT JUST OVER MY HEAD,  I’M TOAST!