Currently At a Full Stop

I am spending this Saturday trying to get back into creating, which is not an easy task for me. I decided to attempt it first with a copy of one of my earlier favorites. 

Personal artwork for me has a history of being very hard going, for several reasons. 

I don't have an undying urge to create paintings, actually a blank canvas can be pretty intimidating. I was raised to be pretty crafty, which is why I enjoy making pretty things, but that doesn't necessarily equate to the "artist mindset" (whatever that is). 

I spent years in my past with a prolific man that does have that undying urge, which was intimidating to me. It left me with this feeling that I should give art up because of my lack of attachment to it, the lack of the undying urge which he had. It was a comfortable place to be, around another creative all the time. It allowed me to have time and space when I felt creative too, and having him around always made for good conversation. But I did notice that as the years went by, I began finding ways to fill up my time and avoid making art. I don't know where the fear came from, or what the fear was rooted in, but my avoidance skills became so great that now I have quite the task to change my behavior. 

As I get older, I have a better vantage point to see where my mental booby traps are. I'm finding that this art thing is a big one. It's wrapped up in a lot of different aspects of my life. ...I know now that I don't want to pull this negative mess along with me anymore, it's too emotionally taxing. My current stance on the way to do this is to try to create on a regular basis, and talk positively of my personal successes. Do art that is unrelated to anyone else's shadow, and find personal validation in myself, not from others. This is something that will take years to work on, I know this. Working on things is not historically a strong suit of mine, but it is an important part of the person I want to become. 

Ceramics!

Here are three bowls I made with my niece at our local Clay Community Center. I am proud of these, looks like my nazi ceramics teacher in college knew what he was doing!

   

Three Minute Pretty

I sat down today and got my art supplies out for the first time in two weeks, and it was great. I'm between classes in grad school, and actually have the time to play with my paints with no ultimate goals in mind. I've always had a hard time coming up with ideas, and gravitate toward faces. Ultimately this lady showed up.

Life hasn't been easy lately. I have spent the past year working at a school for behaviorally challenged teenagers, and it is one of the hardest things I've ever done. One of the major reasons why I go back every day is because it's helping me to understand how to talk out my own problems, find my triggers, recognize when the behaviors of others have nothing to do with me, and how to work past my issues. I have very little time for myself between this job and graduate school, which can leave a person feeling less than whole sometimes.

Recently I've struggled through several of my triggers being hit upon by people I care about in my life. I'm getting closer to understanding why their actions (or lack of actions) are triggers for my emotional upset, and am proud of this slow progress. There are still many things to work on; communication, listening, understanding... but I will take this small positive step as success.

I've heard that when you're going through a rough emotional time, that's when you should be making art. Use art as a way to let feelings out, release some junk rolling around in your brain, etc. 

So I decided to make some monsters. 

And I think that this was a good idea.