beauty in the breakdown

i'm feeling run down. i've totally pushed myself to the limit and too thin all around, but i see how the puzzle pieces are fitting together today and the missing piece is fitting in with satisfying clarity.

i've had many conversations lately with folks where i've sought questions to my answers or vice versa about *life*, mainly connected to success and art making. a good research phase...now to the meat of it.

enough seeking the answers outside of myself (the answers lay in the work) and more just doing and focus and simplifying the distractions and developing a stronger work habit for my art, which is to say a deepening of myself and my craft in a consistent manner. saying no to the rest. i want to really feel like i've committed myself as much as i can and then, well, i'll know that deep down. i'm going to welcome success right now and put my art making endeavors first (this includes blogging for me), including pouring my energy into the logistical side of art as well as the making. i'm going to focus on being prolific and then evaluate the work, not the editing out and discrediting before it's made.

now is the time. there are always a million excuses, social activity and ways of making $ outside of art. and i've been scared sometimes of going there, seizing opportunities and believing in my own quirky beautiful vision of life in paint... really pushing myself and saying no to all the rest and meeting other people's immediate needs and opinions. having patience with myself on this learning process.

my friend who was experiencing transition was talking about how you need to have space between the monkey bars to fall and sometimes no net (i've been worrying a lot about the net-- is it rigged up tight enough?). there is no formula on this path and we are all our own pioneers, right? we are all original, there is no escaping THAT one true thing. i have to tell you that art school got ugly at the end because the critics' voices became stronger than my own and i started losing my vision, so to speak, and fearing my own true marks of expression were frivolous (happy, cute, trendy, mission school (yes i started making art in the mission and it is an admitted influence!), too pleasing of colors...god forbid), and leaned on that as an excuse not to push past and defy that voice. no more! i don't want to be that man who is a well known painter and spoke at my school, but could not speak with out referencing 5 other artists in every sentence whom he was mocking with his art and his art was basically one big mockery. i'm coming across as bitter perhaps and yet i know this artist struggles with his own voice and has chosen that direction, probably as a result of his critics, right? it's a fearful self-protective place to be to mock the art world. nobody can hurt you with their criticism from this place! i want to make art that is personal and derived from an earnest process that then hopefully communicates, not formulaic or intentionally derivative (although, influences are encouraged and inspiration is borrowed everywhere and embedded in our collective sub-conscious, this i do believe)

i think pink kitties and elephants can be serious. pink is a serious color and for my love for it is quite serious, seriously:) glitter and monsters/darkness and flowers and child-like escapes (and all things lace) and longing and rickety boats and grief and tear drops and silver-leaf (a new love) and faded/sanded down and all of it overlapping is a direction i'm seriously invested in exploring. building up my own personal and collective symbols and re-working them to become their own story.

i'm needing to capture this. i wasn't planning on it. i make no apologies. with new found commitment to this road ahead.

here i go to the studio folks! thanks for reading. i hope you all have faith in doing your own thing, whatever it may be. xoxo