Happy Belated New Year

I hope everyone had a great holiday season.

My holidays are always very busy, punctuated with moments of quiet. My family is very small so its always a relaxing few days over Christmas and the New Year. Not much goes on in the household except movie watching, sleeping and eating. I recieved some very nice gifts, which I am really looking forward to using, watching and reading. :)

I have some new artworks to show, which shall be posted soon. Just getting back into the swing of things. I always find my January is about organizing and tying up loose ends. So not much actual artwork gets done.

The weather has been absolutely outrageous. So warm and mild and sunny! Thats very strange for Alberta in the Winter. It's been plus 10 degees some days. I think it might have hit 15, but generally hanging around 0. The weather man keeps talking about all the records being broken. What snow we have is shrinking daily, and the flowering bulbs are trying to grow. Bizaarr.

The big news is that I have moved my art studio out of my home and into a space downtown. This is going to be a big change for me since im a bit of a night owl, and now im going to have to change my shedule to painting during the day. I think it will be good though. More will get done without those distractions that are inevitable when you work from home.

Finally!

I have finally started painting again. Whew! That was a long hiatus, but well worth it as far as I am concerned.

I am not putting any pressure on myself. Just talking it one day at a time and not trying to be a super woman, churning out the work, but at the same time its good to get brush to canvas again.

I really needed that break. Its good to recharge.

I have all my other commitments taken care of, so there are no horrible deadlines looming over my head. I finally feel like I have some time to take some time (if that makes any sense).

I might take a little break from my ATC's and give those a rest too. Not as long though. Just a few weeks. :)

2009 Reflections - Part Two

Its now February. Where does the time go! Today I was setting up a retrospective exhibit with some of the artworks I did in 2009, and it was a really weird feeling. I dated all of the artworks I created with the Month/Day/Year, and I pulled out the piece I did on Feb 1st of last year. It was surreal. I feel like I painted it a hundred years ago. SO much has happened in the last year. SO many pieces of art.

Stone Icon:Archers Window
Feb 1, 2009

What I remember about those first few months are a roller coaster of emotions. Literally. January was the hardest month. It was really difficult developing the patterns and habits which would pull me through the next 8 months. It was a grind and drained me in so many ways, but after I was past that initial hump I began to feel a growing elation. By the end of February I was riding the crest of the biggest 'art high' I have ever experienced. Every piece I did took no effort, came so easily and was filled with joy. I slept 3 hours a night for a solid week, and didn't get tired. It was wonderful. *sigh*. I don't even remember crashing. I think it just ended and I went back to 'normal'. After that I plateaued and pretty much stayed there. No more roller coaster.

Part of my plan for the year included the making of lists. I tried to write down the kinds of subjects I would like to tackle and even went so far as to plan what piece I would do on which day. Well, that plan lasted for about 3 days and then got thrown out the window. The one-a-day challenge is a very organic process, and because one is working on so many things day after day you become very much directed by the process. At least this was my experience. One day leads into a week, leads into a month, and pretty soon you find your choices dictated by what you have done before, or how you feel on that day.

An offshoot to the lists was the idea to work in series and this I very much stuck to. Each week I did 7 pieces that related to each other. Many of these series were an addition to series I have already created (IE: A Space Oddity, The Red Lantern, Stone Icons), but there were many new ideas and I tried to add a bit more challenge to the challenge by tackling my process in a different way, or being minimal, or realistic, or compositional and colourfully uncomfortable. When you work small it seems to allow for more experimentation. If it doesn't work, that's ok, because you haven't invested A. a lot of time, or B. a lot of money in supplies.

My experimentation's lead me in directions that were quite pleasing and inspiring. Now, in 2010, I am using many of the pieces I created in 2009 as a jumping off point, and further exploring the ideas I began.

More thoughts to be continued in part three ... forthcoming.

2009 Reflections - Part One

So, while I am still getting my house in order, and tying up loose ends, I thought I would take a moment to reflect back on my Artwork-A-Day project in 2009.

I am now 2 weeks into January 2010 and I feel like I have had enough time to formulate some thoughts on what was hardest, easiest, and what I learned during this challenge. I'm sure there will be more thoughts to come in future.

One thing I have to do first is to make a confession. While this is very hard for me to admit (and only because I am my own worst critic), my 365 day project ended after 273 days. I'm sure no one will really care that I didn't actually do 365 pieces of artwork, but it still took me a long time to come to terms with this. I was really hung up on that number. The number was what was driving me forward, and it was important. Its interesting how an idea that was of my own creation could hold such power over me.

After the month of September I had to take a step back from the project and give myself permission to take a break. I had fallen behind over the course of the year (you know, life and all that) and during this autumn month I played a gruesome game of catch up. I was honestly creating three pieces of work a day at one point, and when September was done, I was done. It was a grueling task and I was creatively exhausted. I was all caught up, but I now felt like I had "been there and done that". I was ready for something new and different.

This is the difficult part. In order to create a vast amount of work you need to set yourself some limits, and some guidelines that work within your abilities. I knew that for me to create a work of art a day the size needed to be small. That is what I had time to create within, so all my drawings were ATC size (2.5x3.5inches) and all my canvas's were either 4x6 or 5x7 inches. This was also dictated by what I could afford to spend on materials. Let me tell you, it becomes a little tedious painting within a 5x7 space day, after day, after day.

What I really craved was a larger format! Gasp ... the variety of different sized canvas's! What a dream.

I also craved the ability to spend more than one day on a piece. Maybe a whole week! What a thought!

I did still make art for the last three months of 2009, but these pieces were farther apart, more labour intensive (in fact I'm still putting finishing touches on them ;] ), and challenged me in a different way. The "Lucky" Series for instance was what I worked on in November and December. Christmas was coming so I switched gears and made felt ornaments, and folded cranes for decorations. I think I made 42 paper cranes, and 24 felt ornaments. They were completely different and a bit of a novelty at that point. Okay, if I wasn't such a task master I would say "Hey, those could be one-a-day's! They were a creation.", but even though I admit that I could have included them in the project, I'm not going to. I guess I don't feel they were artistic enough. It was after all an "art-a-day", not a "craft-a-day".

At the end of the year I also did something kind of strange. I ended up back where I had started. In January of 2009 I worked on my Stone Icon series for an exhibit in February. At the end of the year, in December, I began to once again create pieces for this series. More Icons, big and small. I didn't really think about it, I just painted what I enjoyed. It was a true Full Circle kind of thing.

I'm not sure how many pieces of art I did in 2009, I haven't tallied them all up yet. I do know that I did more than 273, and less that 365.

More thoughts to be continued in Part Two .... forthcoming.