Good Days and Bad

One of my favorite parts about Nick Wilton's Creative Visioning Program is we spend lots of time talking about the process and how to create a sustainable art practice.  We have some fantastic coaches who delve into the psychology of art making and address all the ups and downs, the fears and the enthusiasm, the progress and the set-backs.  We are encouraged to journal about what works for us, what we love, what we resist.  And over and over we talk about the good days and the bad ones.  For me, the bad ones occur about every other day, and I'm starting to find ways of accepting that and moving through it.

Nick's whole approach is you bring to the canvas whatever you are dealing with that day, so if you are bored, your paintings are boring.  If you are excited, your paintings are exciting.  The trick is to move on if you are not loving what you are doing.  By having lots of pieces going, there should always be some pieces you are not too attached to, low stakes pieces, that make it easy to go in and make big changes.  The deeper into this program I get, the more I am loving that approach.  It makes it so much easier to get to the studio when I know there will be something there that I enjoy doing.

Right now, I have these low stake pieces on my easel and started making big changes to them.

I have 3 bigger panels with 3 layers of paint troweled on, a very soothing process when nothing else is working.

I have a few pieces I just covered in gloss medium and am debating if I want to call them done or add some glazing to soften them.

And I am trying to rescue a favorite brush I forgot to wash.  Damn!  Again!