Thursday, August 21, 2008

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I was reading a book the other day, "Living The Creative Life", by Thomas Kincaide. In one part, he describes how a friend was deeply worried and one thing or another kept piling up on top of the stresses she already had. Finally, she said, "Lord, what should I do?" And the worry went away.
Sami often comes to us with "What should I do?", but I don't often think to ask that of myself, of God. I just muddle along, sure that things will turn out right eventually.
But, I had some worries in the past week which were starting to affect how I acted with my family, how my art was working. I know when I push too hard at Life, Life pushes back, so I decided to try this lady's method and ask my higher power, "What should I do?"
I feel better now. My painting isn't sucking. My thoughts about selling my work are rearranging themselves to the point that if you want to buy something of mine, I'm willing to have you donate to my paint supply/framing fund. I don't want to deal with quarterly tax payments, getting a tax ID, itemizing when I have way more expenses than I suspect I will have sales, so I won't technically be selling right now. But, I will let them go to new homes.
And anything done in '07 can go for free if you're a good friend or relative. That way I have visiting priveleges. I just won't do what my grandmother used to do, take it home again to work on it!
My biggest goal, besides improving on my abilities, is to have a body of work that I feel is good enough to approach a gallery with. That means a whole lot more painting! I only have 2-3 that I would think could be considered. And that's probably flattering myself too much. Once I feel finished with this piece, I'll do an evaluation of the pieces I'm considering. It may be that, as usual, I only can consider the one I'm working on, since my work matures with each painting I do.

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