Nude #4, © Sarah Marie Lacy - 36"x36" acrylic on canvas, unframed.
So I thought that I was officially over the whole gallery fiasco. But then yesterday I woke up feeling thoroughly discouraged and crappy all over again. I’d been trying to get back on the creativity horse and doing little drawings. I had all these plans about drawing from life every day and painting from life and practicing, practicing, practicing.
The problem? My inner artist was not in the slightest bit interested. She was bored. She was annoyed. She basically flipped me off and then went off to sulk. Very little art actually got made, despite my grand plans.
This didn’t help my bad mood. How was I going to improve, get better, get over this rejection if I wasn’t even willing to spend time every day practicing working from life? What was wrong with me? Did I just want to be a crappy, horrible artist forever?
That’s when it struck me – I wasn’t practicing because I genuinely wanted to learn (and trust me, most days I have a voracious appetite for learning).
It was punishment.
It was laps, it was lines, it was detention, it was push-ups. You, Self, have failed us. So we are going to practice until you’ve learned your lesson.
Yeah, not very effective.
No wonder my artist was off sulking. She wasn’t interested in doing mindless drawings of fruit. She wasn’t interested in doing laps. She wanted something juicy to really get her teeth into. She wanted positive action, forward movement. She wanted to do something life affirming. Not something degrading like drawing fruit because I’ve decided that’s the best way for me to become the artist I want to be.
So I’m devising new projects, new paintings! And it’s delicious. I’ve gone through a swath of landscape paintings and guess what? I’m bored. It’s time for some figurative works. (If you’ve got a landscape painting coming to you, no worries – I’ll still be working on that. I just need this too.)
The second I proposed it to myself, I could feel my artist’s ears perk up. She slunk into the corners of my mind, pretending to be all casual – “Hey, I heard you might be doing some project thing. Ya know, that uh.. might be cool. I might tag along. If you’re good.”
She’s a terrible actress. She was practically drooling. She quivered with excitement, sniffing my ideas, nudging her favourite ones forward. Pretty soon, I had a plan of action in place.
I’ll be starting off tomorrow, bright and early. I’ll be back to my routine of painting 3-4 hours a day, which is a thought that induces gleeful grinning. Sometimes I just need to tempt myself with a juicy enough project to get myself back on the creativity horse.
And you never know – I might be able to sneak in some practice art without her even noticing.
As a totally unrelated side note, I was talking to someone the other day and they were surprised to learn that there are prints for sale on the site. Which made me realize that I kind of never tell anyone. So uhh, yeah – if you go to the Art page, most of the pieces are available as prints. Just underneath where you can purchase the original, there are buttons to purchase prints in 2 different sizes – 8″x10″ and 11″x14″. If you feel so inclined, go check it out. Click here!