Piece Of My Mind...

There are so many things going on in my mind that take away from being productive.

I’m trying hard to break through them. We all only have a limited amount of time each day to get things done, I need to find new ways of maintaining focus on what I’m doing when I have the time set aside to do it!
I’ve become accustomed to sitting down at my easel and bringing out my iphone instead of the pencils and paint! Is it a ‘thing’ or am I just procrastinating? I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I’m now aware of how unproductive I am at times and how compelled I can be to keep on looking in that tiny screen! So, from now on, it goes in the other room while I work!

I’ve been thinking about my work. Where I’m going, what I’m doing, what it all means. A lot of my ideas subconsciously surface. It is a surrealist train of thought, brought on while day dreaming. (for example, little miss sunshine: Her golden hair = saturns rings = space = light waves = colour spectrums = the sun =sunflowers = solar flares = scientific diagrams = fibonacci = pixels. There are other factors going on but can you see the evolution of ideas by association?) Sometimes though, this day dreaming has a resistant attitude that is looking for an escape from creating!

This is actually the way I work. I only plan to a certain extent, the rest gets figured out as the painting progresses. Maybe it shows my laziness as an artist. A lack of planning. But then again, that is me down to a T as a person. It is limiting to some degree though, as sometimes I really am not in the right frame of mind to keep a work/thought flow going. I have to take a step back every now and then. Think about how much I actually like making art, how good it is to be able to do this. Some how this releases me from the grip of resistant thoughts.

You wanna know some of what my resistant thoughts are? At times an overwhelming avalanche of comparables. It's as though I must fit in somewhere, in between this artist and that one (but I don't want to at the same time, because it is restrictive and I am rebellious!). I have to somehow categorize my work in order to market it and to do that it feels as though I have to categorize myself - which is difficult to do when you feel like a chameleon! I have to price (just how do you price a unique expression exactly?!) What is reasonable? What is unreasonable? I Have to market, label myself, explain, so as not to confuse you too much. But often I am confused! I have no idea what my work means at times because my ideas come from the subconscious - explaining certain elements requires me to consciously recognise the origin. Art is a language for me that I sometimes have trouble translating into words. So if I do attempt to explain a piece it is like talking about a dream. The core of who I am is there intertwined with random experiences and a couple of inspirational obsessions that I have seen and latched onto with a touch of fascination. I often feel compelled to paint certain things that have captivated me or that I feel strongly for.

Many things are personal... Art is wonderful in that it allows its creator to disclose anything either in an understandable way to another viewer or disguised. Either way it is helpful to be able to 'talk'.