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…