March 8, 2009
Just a few thoughts on day 32 of my 50 day painting "spree". I guess it was around the #22 entry, Bosque County Bluebonnets, that I started realizing that I was running out of reference material. Well...not really but the "easy" ones that I already had in my mind to paint. I dug up this old...old....20 year old photo I took near Clifton Texas, I think. It is yellowed and scratched but it really inspired me. Let me back up, what really inspired me has been the work itself. I work all day in a gallery and frame shop so I am around art all day. However I am also around customers (always have to be "on") and dealing with shipments and deadlines yada, yada, yada so that by the end of the day my brain is sometimes fried, my feet hurt, my back aches and there is not much daylight left. I go home, cook supper, wash clothes and try to catch up on paper work from my husbands side business. Painting is usually the last thing I think of. However, it is always one of the activities I think and dream about the most. I turned 50 this year, hard for me to admit! So I decided that I would dedicate a chunk of time, 50 days, and paint a small painting every day. This has been the most wonderful, creative, insightful, demanding things I have ever undertaken. I would do it again in a heart beat. Even as tough as it is to haul myself out to my studio and deal with the fading light (thank goodness for the time change) as soon as I smell those wonderful fumes, put the first blob of paint on my brush and make that first stoke I am lost and not much else penetrates my brain for 2-3 hours. I am tired when I go to bed but oh so satisfied that I have spent time doing what I love most in this world to do.