Sometimes I have so many epiphanies that I can't narrow it down to one.  Then they all get lost.  So, I've decided to use this blog to see if I can't slog my way through the ideas that keep coming.  Some are holding me back and some are pushing me forward.  I think I need to pay attention to both because if I focus on what's holding me back, I can't be embracing the ones that move me forward.

I need to catch up with my thoughts.  I will start by what happened in California.  I received news that the painting I had entered in a show was not selected.  I have to say it really stunned me.  That was my best work.  I kept it to myself and ruminated endlessly on it.  Then my daughter, her boyfriend, and I went to a one-man studio/gallery in South Laguna.  It's one we've visited several times and once a friend of mine bought a piece of the artist's work.  The last two times he's not been in his gallery so we were left to peer into the windows at his work.   I've always loved his stuff because it's usually of water, ocean, sky, etc.  I would have thought the two paintings in his window were photos.  They were huge (maybe 6' by 7') and were of waves crashing on the shore.  They were stunning.  They also had been sold for $22,000 a piece.   The first time I was there he had a beautiful large triptych that was about $4000.  My daughter said his work had really taken off and I could see why. 

My epiphany is that I allow other people's opinions to dictate my artistic self worth.  This is not such a new or startling concept, but I see it through a different end of the binoculars.  I have been painting for the benefit of others so my work will be accepted and lauded.  That, I think, will make me really feel like an artist.  But what I really want is for my paintings to be like the song I'm listening to; Alanis Morrissette's Not As We (not to mention Torch and In Praise of the Vulnerable Man).  They are so beautiful I want to cry and my emotions soar.  That's what I want my art to do; but for me, not for anyone else.
 

I have two brand new canvases up on my easels.  I have cleaned the studio (anything to delay exercising) and I'm ready to paint what I really want even if it takes me a year to finish one.  I want to paint the sky again and the ocean; the place I love the most.  I will never be able to paint like the artist in Laguna and really I don't want to.  I want to paint what I want, the way I want.  I have no idea if I have the talent to do it, but I'm willing to try.