Creative Process or Lack of

The other day I read an article on Fine Artist Newsletters by Moshe Mikanovsky titled "Am I an Artist?" Moshe began his article by asking if anyone noticed that he had not posted, blogged, or written for quite awhile. He stated, "In one word – Resistance. I was overwhelmed by that multi-headed monster, which told me that I am not a real artist. That I am not good enough. That I am a fraud. That I cannot give advice to other people while I have not succeeded much on my own.....And I believed it....This was on the bad days. On the good ones, the resistance was just tasks I had to do.....And I let it take hold of me and keep me away from making art."

WOW! this hit home for me. I have been sooooo complacent for a very long time. I was riding on the euphoric feeling of getting my painting into Viewpoint. Then my private painting class ended and the holidays hit and I just stopped. I am (and have been) working on a painting, but did not feel the need to push myself to finish it up. Then I got the notice that Viewpoint was moving their date to enter from August to May. Yikes!

I always begin the new year selecting the shows I want to enter and what I want to paint for these competitions. This early deadline totally overwhelmed me. Because the show meant so much to me, I became frozen and found the task to move forward hard to do.

Moshe said that several things helped him to begin to be reborn in his art. He gave a lot of credit to Seth Godin's book Linchpin. Moshe put several quotes in his newsletter, but the quote Seth wrote that spoke to me was,

 “Most of all, art involves labor. Not the labor of lifting a brush or typing a sentence, but the emotional labor of doing something difficult, taking a risk and extending yourself.”

Taking a risk and extending myself. That always seems to be the elephant in my room. Putting oneself out there is not an easy task, yet the task that has to be dealt with is to push ourselves to paint, to run our homes, to take care of our families, to achieve our goals. Funny how I (we) can easily lose site and let complacency set in.

I am not going to promise that I will be a better painter, blogger, worker, wife, mother, etc... I will, however, try to take one day at a time and promise MYSELF to take the time to assess what needs to be done in my creative process so that I am happy with my progress.

I Am an ARTIST
Gaylynn