I spent the day working on following through on projects that I had already begun. Part of my artistic history that I am working to change is to finish things. So much unfinished work hiding in the studio avoiding judgement. So many years that I hid behind the words “I’m not finished”. That way when anyone saw my “not good enough work”, I had an out. I no longer want and need the out. I’ve walked through art fairs, museums and paged through art magazines and seen work that I love. So much of it is simple, uncomplicated, without the kind of perfection that I expect of myself. I see color that I am in awe of, or works that evoke feeling, it’s what I want to get to in my own work. To free myself of the weight of my own expectation. To learn to just let the creativity flow and watch what happens. To stop sitting in judgement of myself and create for the sheer pleasure of it. In a few days I will reach the two month mark with this project. I am seeing and feeling a difference in my work. I have not however, learned to put my work first. I am still on many a night scrambling at the end of the day for a project. It took far too many years for me to begin this journey, and I know I can’t expect everything to change over night. I told my son not long ago that I didn’t want to be “mad” at anyone anymore. Life is too short. I think I need to take that to heart for myself, to be a little kinder to me. I also need to make myself and my work a priority.

I did more work on the Iris box. It still isn’t complete, I’m waiting for some antique stain on the top to dry. I am also experimenting with something I read about on Pinterest. It is a technique to turn regular printer paper copies of my work into canvas prints. I am posting one of a painting I did based on a very old botanical drawing. I had some success with this first one, but I tried three others that were not quite as successful. I wasted a lot of time and materials. I’m not giving up. I like the first one, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow.