Dear Friends,
First of all, I want to thank you all so much for your kind, encouraging words & wonderful nuggets of wisdom that you left for me on the previous post regarding my painting conondrum. I want you all to know that it helped me so much. I took a break the last few days from the "painting thang" to kind of regroup. I came up with an additional and enlightening discovery while working in my collage artjournal last night. Even though I know you all are right on the money that it's really about being stretched, and that I am indeed out of my "comfort zone", I did, however, discover another reason for my frustration while working on the painting below.
First of all, I hadn't worked on my art journal for a few days, and collage, after all, is my "therapy" if you will. Especially scrap collage. When I sit down to do an art journal entry, I have a host of goodies waiting for me in a nice little box. I have images, words, letters, familiar papers and writings to tell my "story". So many tools and tricks to say what I want. Sometimes, one image can say it all. That is the wonderful part of mixed-media art...you can have your cake and eat it too! Sometimes I don't really know what I am going to "say" on a page.. I do know (now) that when I grab an image, it's purposeful. I pick one up, pass up another, then finally go to one that reflects what I feel at that very moment. Yes, I do think about it that much. For this is how I express myself. Those things that I cannot put into words, I find in the bits of papers. So, you see, THIS, I feel is ONE of the reasons I got SO frustrated with painting the other day.... I sat down to compose my story, but I didn't have the ability, or skill to translate onto the canvas what I felt inside.
This is how personal art is to me. I know some of you may not understand this and others of you will. I feel I was trying to play a song, but I didn't know how to read the music. So, when I was done, the part of me that wanted to speak or "sing" was muzzled. That made me very frustrated!
So, where do I go from here? Well, for one, I cannot stop my regular shin dig (my journalling and collage) while I'm painting. The painting cannot take the place of the 'work' I do in my journal. For now, I will approach painting without so much emotion...I will try to start back at square one and learn the basics. I will be easier on myself, and I will certainly take a class to see if that is something I want to pursue. So, my friends, this is where I'm at right now. I've learned a lesson I didn't know was going to be in the curriculum! You all have been wonderful teachers and classmates on my art journey here! I thank you all SO very much for listening and helping me through this. I hope to share more of my heart and my colors with you this year. xoxooxo lia
