Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Or trying to anyway…

I’ve been talking about—and wanting to—return to painting for a long time. More than 20 years if you don’t count the sporadic short-lived attempts I’ve made in the last few years. This has been a great struggle for me—all mixed up with insecurities about the value of my work, time, money—all that good stuff. In the meantime I’ve been working and learning new things, other things… like this, blogging and web design.

So now I’m going to try again. And I’m going to try blogging about it as well. As a means of putting my intent out there, and of keeping myself honest. If I make my efforts public, then I guess I’ll have to be a bit more accountable. I’ll also learn to suck up my pride a little and actually post the work I’m doing… whether I’m happy with it or not.

In the last month or so, I’ve been cleaning up and re-organizing my office to be my studio. I built a new taboret and a handy shadow box on a stand to set up still-lifes on. I’ve even done a couple of small paintings—inspired by a group of “daily painters” I’ve been following online. The tomatoes on a plate painting in this post is one of them. I’ll put up more as I go along.

I’ll also try to post if I’m not painting… and talk about why. I don’t wanna get all psych-babble with this, and turn this into a soap opera. But I am struggling with some insecurity around my painting, and my guess is that I’m not alone in that. So maybe this can be a place where we can encourage each other to break out of it. I sure as hell need that. So I’m leaving this open to comments. All I ask is… Be gentle.