Starting As An Artist All Over Again

Dipping into artistic waters again

A resin snowman

For most of us the simple act of starting ... something ... anything ... is a difficult if not daunting process. Starting all over again, is I have found even harder. Why?  Because starting all over again IS literally ... I believe ... starting ALL over again! 

After completing a mailbox birdhouse I started two years ago, I grabbed a white, resin snowman and started painting, finally, a few months after getting the new "studio" more of less set up. As mundane as this sounds, it gave me an opportunity to explore color again and hone my painters touch! However, as I quickly discovered, it was hardly set up, ready to go, as there were paints and add-on items to individualize my projects in about 20 different places. The question then is ... do you paint or do you spend the time organizing? I chose to paint and as for the rest, organize as you go!

As I wrote earlier about finally being in a Gallery show, I realized that with one exception, it is with items I created from past glories, items created, with one exception, from another time, another place. Even the newest completed item was started two years ago and only completed last month! It has been difficult first to create an artistic home in my new environment, dealing with the thousands of minutiae that involves: new doctors, new spaces, new vehicle, new friends, then getting inspired all over again. If you've never had to do that you are fortunate. Those that have know exactly what I mean.

Creating a new work space has been for me the most daunting thing. As I have slowly started to get inspired and finally paint again, I realize how much more organizing I need to do. To find one item (and discovering others you forgot you had) involves going through bags, and tubs and trays that eats into your "creative" time. It is rewarding in many ways and yet shows you how much disorganization still remains.

Blank fan from Hong Kong - paper masks from Cananda

Then there is the collecting of new items you find along the way ... a blank fan from Hong Kong, papier- mâché masks from Canada, a new lettered canvas design at Michaels, a new paint, new cool permanent ink pens ... the list goes on and on! What's an artist to do? For me at least, it is to now forge on. It is very easy to get buried in the minutia of life and I realized that is exactly what I have done. Seeing fellow artists at work not bothered by the fact their lives were, at least in that moment of time, troubled or insecure, were creating something finally gave me the permission to create again as well.

A new challenge - an A canvas!

The other big advantage of living in Palm Springs, though some might dispute the fact that it is an advantage, is that it is so fricking hot during the summer that no one wants to go outside during the day unless they absolutely have too! In fact, I was told shortly after I moved here that when summer hits, and it did around the end of June, that you close all the blinds, turn on the air and leave it on 24 / 7, strip naked and catch up on all the TV you missed fall, winter and spring.  

You laugh. There is a reason all the snow birds come here beginning around the end of September and have flown home by May ... we don't have any snow to shovel and being outside takes precedence to being inside. Summers though are ... well, let me put it this way, succinctly, HELL! My new air conditioner failed and they finally got it fixed a week later the day it reached 122º. The bags were packed, in fact, it was that bad.

A blank slate of any size is good!

Yet it also creates an enforced creative time, a time that you can finally spend without all the distractions the Coachella Valley has to offer most of the year. Art, music, design, films ... the list goes on and on. There isn't a month that there isn't something to do and now even summer is beginning to draw crowds with events like the first ever Palm Springs Comic-con at the end of August. The 2017 show in San Diego rumor has it is already sold out so for the first time in my life I'm going to go. I figure one day away from a brush and a bottle of paint is worth the stimulation of people that, to be kind, seem to live in another world ... far, far away! And I have been told you wish they did!

The artists life is never easy. Many toil yet few achieve success or recognition. We are driven and maybe at some time and place what we have created will be appreciated and our talent recognized.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please, take the time to explore earlier blogs where the emphasis here and always is to explore the ways design affects our lives ... and always has.