today, after two naps (and truth be told, a day off), i am feeling much stronger than i did yesterday. i usually hold fast to julia cameron’s the artist’s way as a means of support, but yesterday and today i whipped out one of the big guns: steven pressfield’s, the war of art:
“He knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow. The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you’re finished. The pro doesn’t even pick up the phone. He stays at work.”
today, i chose to take stock of some of the art i created this year:
i have explored many different media, from encaustic,
to pastels,
to acrylic, to collage and mixed-media...
and it dawned on me, that i created 99% of these pieces in the quiet solitude of my late night studio visits, with swaths of time to play, and while supported by a group of fellow creatives that met weekly for the last year or two.
i have none of these things now. zero studio hours with the solitude i need (i sleep in the wee hours now), the snippets of time i have are used for tending to my jewelry business...and my weekly artgroup folded...did i tell you that? yes, it folded quietly (it was time), and i didn’t realize how much our gatherings served to help keep me going forward and how i haven’t really grieved over it.
should it be any wonder artmaking has been such a struggle lately?
so here i go. onward. to clean up my studio (again) so that i can make more art. to form a new artgroup, a new group to love and to receive from. to make art and to connect even when it’s hard. to try again.
