I am on the verge and just about to…

I have no shortage of creative ideas…just a serious lack of the “right” kind of time…it is kind of like when, a number of years ago, I wouldn’t allow myself to paint for over a year because we had to get our taxes done…the taxes never got done and I got progressively more grumpy because I wasn’t painting! Now our taxes are done…finally…we put 3 years worth into the system about 3 weeks ago…and we are caught up for the first time in about 5 years…I should be celebrating and painting my head off…so what is holding me up now?

It could be because I now feel that I should be doing all of the de-cluttering that needs to be done before LT will come to paint the house so we can put it on the market…but, like the taxes, neither the de-cluttering nor any painting is getting done!

You would think that I would have figured out by now (actually, I think I have figured it out…I just don’t act on it)…that I need to strike some kind of balance between doing what has to get done (in this case de-cluttering and packing) and what needs to get done (some serious creative play so I can function)…but balancing, scheduling and all of those basic organizational things have never been my strong suit…I seem to bounce from an excess of one thing to an excess of another…so that when there are things that really have to get done, like taxes and de-cluttering, I end up avoiding everything and doing nothing…except my mind never stops racing between thinking up creative ideas for paintings and berating myself for not getting the “have to get done” things done…I am my own worst enemy!

Yesterday, in my avoidance of all things, I wandered off down this trail…it all started with a newsletter from Photojojo…it was called “Unchartered Photography: 7 AM Portraits”…a fun “Sleep/Wake” project idea that Meredith Andrews came up with…this led me off in 2 directions…one was to look at Meredith Andrew’s website…I love her “Works in Progress”…I have a thing about repetition and collections of things that are all the same but different…the other was another link from the Photojojo newsletter that led to an article in the New Yorker about a series of photographs that Michael Putnam did back in the 60’s and 70’s about sleeping in public…they are wonderful…the book – called “Sleep” has been reprinted…I would love to get a copy…

It was an enjoyable couple of hours…and not wasted time either...I justify it by telling myself that it is all a part of the “filling of the well”…now if I could only get myself to pack for a couple of hours, paint for a couple of hours and blog wander, visit a gallery or go on a photography excursion to fill the creative for a couple of hours daily...well…then I might find some balance…but, wait…how do I fit working into that?

I Have a New Toy…!

I can’t remember, exactly, when my elder daughter and I took a weekend workshop at the Ottawa School of Art…it was a few years ago now…but I do remember the content of the 2-day workshop! It was my first introduction to encaustic painting…and I loved it…

For one reason or another, and likely because of a great many reasons and life ‘stuff’, I haven’t been up to paint in my studio since the last mad flurry before my show back in March! I have been photographing and I suppose that this has kept me stimulated enough creatively so that I haven’t felt an overwhelming need to be painting…but I do miss it…

I love oil paints for their richness and the way they blend…but with the way that I paint…using tons of paint and slathering it on thick, with lots of texture…it takes years for my oil paintings to fully cure…that was why I switched to using acrylics…and I love the different acrylic mediums and the ease of clean-up and all…but they aren’t oils…they just don’t have the same luminosity and richness…encaustic painting combines oil pigments with molten beeswax…the depth and sheen of this amalgamation is simply amazing…plus this medium has endless possibilities…you can build it up with many layers, carve into it to reveal the layers below, add elements to it creating a collage, create a layered mass of it and then carve away at parts of that…artist Laura Moriarty does some pretty wild things with encaustics…this video shows her working on one of her sculptural paintings…

Another encaustic artist that I like is Susan Wallis…

Ever since that encaustic workshop, I have wanted to explore this medium further…and our visit to Su Sheedy’s studio in Kingston back in April woke that urge up again…

While at Su’s studio, she showed me her tools and materials…one main tool was a blow torch…with a self-igniting switch…how cool is that?...

It has already been 2 months since we visited Su’s studio…but the idea of doing some encaustics hasn’t been far from my thoughts…and a couple of days ago, I finally used up some of my Canadian Tire funny money and bought myself this…