A Save Is Always Encouraging

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Sometimes an image that is not pleasing (and you’ve spent hours on the damn thing) will surprise you and combine with another image into something you do like. I am talking about digital images here, but my collage paintings work the same way. A newly placed paper or two can transform a so-so area into something spectacular.

A save is always encouraging, but sometimes I simply do work that looks bad ~ it’s part of being willing to experiment. I might spend days or weeks on a piece, and finally just trash it. I close my eyes and thank my muse for the lessons learned, and grab something new (kind of like getting back on the horse that threw you). Otherwise, I might sink into a pit of despair and start allowing such ridiculous thoughts as ” I’ll never create good art again!”

That’s a self-indulgent waste of time.

A working artist has to deal with emotional highs and lows. I stress WORKING because that’s what counts, the every day work.

Fish Dream 1

Fish Dream 2

Fish Dream 3

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again. ………….. ~ Elizabeth Aston, The True Darcy Spirit, 2006 I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. …………… ~ Duke Ellington Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. …………. ~ Thomas Merton

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