This is the first in a set of hummingbird paintings I've been commissioned to do by one of my biggest supporters, Cherry!
Working on this painting gave impetus for the epiphanies and revelations I've had about painting, my work, and where I want it to go [see previous post].
And, for the first time in a LONG time, I felt like I was at home with painting, that I wasn't trying to contrive something because I "thought I had to". And MOST IMPORTANTLY, I didn't have the thought demons [the nay-saying critics inside my head] nor was I bothered by the ringing of past professors' voices in my ears.
I never thought I'd really escape that, but I think that listening to all of the artist & crafter interviews on this one podcast I've started following has really helped me. Listening to others speak about their work in a non-pretentious way, and the fact that they are successful artists outside of the mainstream and outside of the Art World, is really giving me hope. I've just been so caught up, these past few years, in everything that art school was preaching, the direction my professors were urging me to go in....and, they very well could be right, that maybe I "should be doing this other thing, this other way". But when listening to those voices prevents me from painting at all, then "that way" is the wrong way. For me at least.
To put it one more way, it's as if I came to a multidirectional fork in the road, recalling voices that urged me to take one way, with my own mind telling me to go another, and then over-reasoning/analyzing to take yet another route. And so I stopped, and sat/stood/slept at that fork for the past 4 years, only imaging where each of those off-shoot paths could take me. And everything that has been happening lately- including commissions and realizing that staying in a 9-5 desk job will eventually kill me, I just decided to get up and start walking, intutively, whichever path my feet gravitated towards. So, I guess, this blog will be documenting my "travels".
So, thank you, Cherry. I am free from the bonds of my past! And, I think, on the path moving forward again.
Oh, Corrie it's beautiful. I really like the painting, and your blog, and you, and the path you took, and the painting and the fact that you're slowing the chatter in your brain, and you and your honesty and your talents and of course the painting and you. I think today I am an upside down hummingbird seeing a view I don't alwasy see and using a lot of energy to to get what I need.
ReplyDeletelove, Cherry