FOCUS.....FOCUS...FOCUS....
That is what I have been telling myself the past few days.....I have deadlines looming! And I have started some of the projects....then abandoned them!....I dislike them....nothing seems to fill me up....nothing seems to satisfy me....nothing seems to be "good enough"....NOTHING!
I hate that! So I walk away from the projects....I get myself into a mind set that I just won't meet my obligations....I have to much on my plate....life is NOT for my living!!
GOOD THING THAT PASSES!!!
This morning I woke to realize that these projects are not getting done because I am not focusing on ME.....I am not focusing on my art that makes me happy and whole....I am not focusing on a part of ME that needs to be kept alive and flourishing.....Not to mention that the projects that I have deadlines for....WELL....I was trying to go off the beaten path of what I normally do with my art...and today I realized.....WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?
I am color....I am full of fun....I am my art....my art is ME.....
SO today.....I have re primed not only the pieces that I am working on.....BUT hopefully myself!
Sometimes you just have to realize when to start OVER and BEGIN AGAIN!
rambles from the shadow side of life...About living...about living with dying....This is where my heart will pour forth...this is where my shadow will be exposed...this is where I will cry...where I will laugh...where I will become one with that shadow of life...
4 comments:
Great message. I hate it when I get the "you've got to take care of the caregiver" lecture. I remember giving the same speech time after time to my daughter. We know what's true and we also know we can only do so much.
Then one day instead of schlepping through life we remember - we are art, or prose, or poetry, or whatever it is that we are. Our hearts, I think, are what bring us back to the center.
Beginning again is a good thing.
Dear Pattie:
As I read your post today I looked up at the beautiful RED Guardian Angel Box you made, standing there on it's "knobby" little polka-dotted feet and a handle just like the feet sitting right on top like a cherry tomato. Two bright and fanciful butterflies adorn the front and back with happy flowers on the sides. The box is studded with sparkly sequins and a marvelous diamond pattern on the top. It makes me happy just to look at it.
I know that this box is very much a part of who you are.
Art is so individual and tied to the spirit so that sometimes, very unintentionally, it reflects what we are feeling...it surprises us and frustrates us. I learned to look at that art as speaking to me too, it surprises me how it can reveal things within myself I wasn't totally aware of.
It sounds like YOU NEED to find that colorful, fun side of who you are, go for it, I know it's there.
Here's to "filling yourself up", way up!!!!
XXX
OOO
Pat
P.S. I'd like to share with you a collage I worked on yesterday which didn't register with me until after I had completed it what I had just done. I was kinda thinking I'd do a combination of the artist Judy Chicago and her abstract vagina paintings on plates for her infamous work, "The Dinner Party" and Georgia O'Keefe and her sensous flowers using cut up photos of lilies, a fetus in the womb, a canyon in the southwest and droplets of water on a spider web. When I finished and walked away I thought, EUREKA, REBIRTH and MIRACULOUS STEM CELLS, not at all what I had consciously been thinking.
Of course I can't imagaine a ready market for this piece, nor did I create it for anyone but myself, but IT SURPIRISED ME in what it ended up revealing. In a way, for me, it's what journaling is all about.
Great wake-up realization, Pattie! Be you, wonderful, colorful, creative YOU!
Pattie, I have been out of the loop for awhile, but you are never far from my thoughts. It is my goal today to catch up, especially with you and Michael. I start with this post because you touched my heart with your words. I've been discouraged lately about the impact the economy is having on my dreams of a livelihood in art. On the one hand, my art is better than ever and I have a tremendous support system. On the other hand, it isn't selling. But, you have reminded me, and uplifted me, to remember that I am art. It has been building up in me for years and now it is gushing out. It has been my mental survival in my own desperate times. Thank you, my friend, for such wise words. If I don't do my art, I don't breathe (maybe that's why my asthma as been worse lately... hmmm).
Keeping in touch with all the wonderful folks I've met on the blogosphere is like an energy tonic, and one I need to take daily.
When I picked up the latest copy of "The Artful Blogger" I remembered the day I saw yours and jumped in to visit --- what a God-send that was, as are you.
Blessings to you and Michael!
Barb
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