My first memory, like my first memory ever, is of me painting a heart in preschool. I must have been 3. My second memory was of me, peeing on the red storytime carpet. Same era.
The difference is that I remember how proud I felt of nailing the heart (red and blue, on newsprint, standing at an easel and you can be sure that I put up quite the fight to let them dress me with the apron or smock that they tortured me with. My second memory flooded me with shame and regret.
But newsflash, this is not a downer post! So I’ll skip the sob stories and promise to tell them another day.
This Past Summer, I bought all my art supplies in one shot. I dropped over $1000 and doubled down on all of this.
Kind of insane, and kind of awesome and also completely terrifying. If I’ve ever had to push, it’s now. I’ve been testing the waters and buying one canvas at a time, one color as I need it. I’ve been cautious, but I’ve also been studying.
For the past few years after closing the shop down, I’ve been scanning the horizon, trying to make things happen, I’ve been knocking on doors- some of them opening, some of them closing, some of them swinging all in and then all out, like in an old saloon.
Always, looking and searching.
Like scanning the crowd to see that face that will make your heart skip.
I think I’ve been transparent here about my design work and it not making my heart skip all the time (maybe even skipping with horrible doom and anxiety?). But since I’ve been diligent about painting on a regular basis, I can say that the design work is awesome. Is it super easy and free of problems? Most certainly not… does it entail hours upon hours of driving and a variety of shit sandwiches? Well yes it does! Most Definitely!
But you know what?
It’s ok.
Because I get to paint. And I chose to paint.
The only other painting that I did outside of school, was a terrible fuschia mess with a collaged imaged on Louise Brooks and a piece of black lace.
It found the curb right away. And with that, I threw away any desire or belief that I could paint. I could draw, hatch, charcoal, but not paint. Not me.
I scanned back through my IG feed yesterday and looked at last year’s photos.. the ones after July and was genuinely embarrassed at how bad most of it was, and still is. But the amazing thing is to see how far you’ve come? When at first, you were paralized and doodled patterns after patterns because you didn’t think you were allowed to paint figuratively? And then this comes out:
So yeah, I’ll take the shitty design work day, because it gives me something in return: the ability to revisit that well of creativity, that doesn’t belong to me but that I get to access, every time I sit at that table and fill my pots with water. Sometimes she’s shitty. Sometimes she’s magical, but the best thing about her, is that she’s always there.
The reminder that beyond the messed up counter installations and miss matched guest room hand towels, it’s all good.
It’s maybe even fantastic, who knows?
It’s hard to know what these posts are about, I’ve floated through the last year of blogging and the same themes come up, over and over. It’s like they are on repeat. Except, I think these canvases and these art supplies are the beginning of a new story. One that involves paintings, an online shop, some caftans and maybe even that famous planner of mine.
They say nothing happens if you keep your dreams to yourself.
Well I guess writing them out for the interwebz is the opposite of that.
Thanks for reading along!
xo