Pre-Show Jitters…

It feels strange to me…I paint happily, quietly all by myself up in my studio…getting completely lost in thought…or, at times, the act of painting brings me a blessed release from too much thinking…I get lost in the colours and the textures of the paint…fat, colourful globs, swirls, peaks…I love the zen of putting the paint on…slathering it on…moving it around on the canvas…taking delight not only in the mixing of the colours, but also simply in the texture created by the brush, palette knife or whatever it is that I am using to apply the paint…it is a very private thing…

It may be because I am still new to this…I hope that is the main cause for it…but I suspect that I will always feel these pre-show jitters to a certain degree…and probably a bit of healthy fear is a good thing…it is a big step to move from the private into the public...

Initially…when I am working on setting up a show…I don’t feel these jitters…but as the deadline looms, they set in…usually a couple of weeks before the show date…that is when my negative inner voice starts to speak up…telling me that I am not worthy…asking me who I am trying to kid…suggesting that I don’t have enough pieces for the space…

I try to quell this negative voice…tell myself that it is just that…my over-active inner critic…I go to a fair number of art shows…I am constantly looking at art of all sorts…I am by no means much more than a beginner at this…but I think that I can hold my own in the emerging artist’s ring…sure there are many, many who are far better than I will ever be…sometimes that is because we are creating different types of art…also, I am not, I don’t think, at the bottom of the pile…it is a dangerous thing, this comparing yourself…it can lead to a bruising of the self esteem…or, worse, an inflated ego!

So here I am…a few days before the opening of my next show…a solo one…this is my 9th show…my 5th solo one…and I have just come through the pre-show jitters…my elder daughter joined me yesterday evening and, with the owner of the gallery, we got it hung…mostly I was worried that I didn’t have enough pieces…this is my first themed show…so it is all pieces from my Flow series…a few weeks ago I went into overdrive and finished up a few pieces, as well as started and finished, 8 new pieces…it was a lot of fun…and, as usually is the case with me, the more I paint, the more the ideas start to fly…it just takes the looming deadline to make me rearrange my life so that I make painting a priority...I ended up with 21 pieces, 2 of which are triptychs and 1 diptych - so 26 canvases in total...

Now the next thing that I get worried about is the ‘vernissage’…the actual opening event…where I have to be present, with my art…the pieces that I have created in private, which are now hung in a public space with people there to view them…I suppose that this gets easier with experience as well…but this is only my 2nd vernissage!

Rebecca – the owner of the Stepping Stones Art Gallery is a wonderful person…not only does she operate this art gallery, but she also runs Camellia Teas of Ottawa, which not only hosts traditional Japanese tea ceremonies, but so much more…demonstration and instruction is a variety of world tea ceremonies, Kimono, Ikebana and painting…entering into Stepping Stones Art Gallery and the home that houses it is like stepping into another world…a wonderful world of all kinds of aesthetics…

With respect to the art gallery, one of the things that Rebecca likes to facilitate is a bridge between artist and viewer…she creates a safe, encouraging atmosphere in which communication between the 2 can be carried out without fear of judgment or ridicule…so I that think this will be a very good experience for me…talking about my art is something that I have had to learn how to do…it doesn’t just come flowing out naturally…but it is important, I think, for my growth…

Creative Growth…

We grow in our creativity – at least I do – in fits and spurts…there are times of rapid growth and times of slow or non-existent growth…it is in the times of rapid growth that I have ideas coming at me faster than I can do anything with them and I need to write them down or risk loosing them…then in the times of slow or no growth, I can go back and explore these ideas that I wasn’t able to look at before (that is, if they still make sense!)…

There are also time when I seem to get sidetracked altogether…like I seem to have been lately…spending more time doing photography…but it all goes towards feeding the creative spirit…I did make it up to the studio yesterday though…I have a few painting ideas that have been percolating and germinating in my head for a while now and I need to get them out now…and it is a good time to get them out and onto canvas, because I can use these ideas (which will hopefully be actual, physical paintings soon) for my next show that is coming up fast! I think I will have enough for the show with these few more…this is something I am still figuring out how to figure out – how many paintings are needed to nicely occupy a specific space…I guess that comes with experience…

I’m not sure what, if any specific thing or combination of things, triggers periods of rapid growth…was it something inspirational that I saw? – I’m sure that has an effect sometimes, but it doesn’t always seem to…is it just some natural ebb and flow of my being?...to be honest, I haven’t ever really tried to track the reasons…while I am lucky in that I almost always have more ideas than time to explore them, I am not so self-assured that I want to look too closely at that creative vapour thread for fear of scaring it away…and I think, by its very nature, it is an ethereal thing, not something that you can produce on demand by means of some creative recipe…

I do know that I am always looking at art…of all kinds…all over the place…in real life and on the Internet…blog wandering is great for this…I can get lost for hours wandering from link to link…eye candy to eye candy…inspiration to inspiration…researching various artists…I also going to galleries, read books and magazines…this renewed interest in photography has me becoming more observant and that helps not only with my photography but also with creative ideas for painting…I think this constant immersion keeps me inspired…

This week I will be bringing in 3 paintings to the Ottawa School of Art Boutique to hopefully have them hung for sale in there…I am still deciding which ones to take in…

This one...


















And maybe this one...this is a detail...














My studio is in its usual state of chaos...I am going now to spend some time painting...sorting...and deciding which paintings to submit...

Month End…Month Beginning…

Yesterday was so busy…I didn't get home from it all until almost 10pm...in between 3 various appointments I managed to get my photography show hung at the ArtSpace at the Unitarian…I am still working on the photo transfer piece that I had wanted to have done for it…but it didn’t happen…I can go in and hang it later in the month…or save it for another show…or see about getting it accepted into the Ottawa School of Art Boutique which is taking in submissions on February 17th and 18th…








































I finished my first month of Project 365 and made the mosaic for the month…


















I have also gone through all the shots I took in January – 527 of them and picked out some of the ones that I didn’t choose for the project but that I still like for one reason or another…

In no particular order here they are…


















































































































































































Another thing that I tried to do was to pick a favorite photo from the 31 photos that I did choose for the project…and that was hard…first I narrowed it down to these 5…and then I got stuck…