Meanwhile back at camp



There are times in July when living in the mountains seems like summer camp. Only I am the camp counselor and I have work to be done. It isn't all about arts and crafts or hikes and collecting leaves. Life was simpler when it was just merit badges you had to earn. I think I would have earned badges this summer for Arts (the July solo show) and Gardening and Photography and Animal Care. Score me at least one demerit for Camp Site Care.

Wasn't life good when there were gold stars and merit badges and report cards to rate how well you were doing in life? If you have one of those 9 to 5 jobs then I suppose you get to judge your value by merit increases and bonuses. With self-employed artists it gets rather nebulous. Do you measure your success in paintings completed or just those sold. Or the awards won. Or name recognition on Google.

An art collector compared my paintings favorably with Jennifer Cavan, Tom Nobel, and Ed Sandoval recently. Nice. But that is only a personal merit badge. Life is a lot of private merit badges. It is wise to stop and take note of them from time to time. There are those personal demerits too. And I think artists often hear those above the others. It is not easy to put your life on view for public evaluation all the time. I have three novels upstairs I do not attempt to publish. And I have paintings I show only to myself.

Yesterday I was sitting on the studio stoop contemplating three new paintings, the summer cold, and how badly the grass again needed mowed and the garden weeded, and how to better market my art. I was totally ignoring the kitchen cleaning required. I wanted nothing more than to desperately do one of those camp projects which could be done in an afternoon and wins praises from parents (well, not my parents who expected the Pieta). You know the ones. The one that came to mind for me involved a pie tin, plaster of Paris, and a collection of things picked up on the morning hike. I always excelled at salt maps, dioramas, collages. Everyone at camp raved about them.

"Nice, dear," Mom would say. "Now go clean your room."

The current equivalent is, "I just love this painting. Will you take half?"

So I sit on the stoop and debate three new paintings or once again giving up on being an artist. BTW I discovered last time I tried it for two years that it was not an option. Painters have to paint. But there is always a mural in my bedroom. Or those painted risers on the stairs I have been thinking about for years.

Maybe it is just the summer cold. Or merit badge withdrawal.



Comments

  1. Terry RoweJuly 21, 2014 at 5:38 AM

    the slump after the huge build up to your solo show. Time to rest and refill your soul. Being an artist also requires constant vigilance to excise self-doubt.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I write for me but I care what my readers think. Please be polite and no scamming.

Popular posts from this blog

Polyethylene Packaging - a Dark Times Journal entry

Image
I was in the fourth grade when our family moved from El Paso, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We moved because I could not breathe the air there. I want to say they cracked petroleum there. But what did I know beyond the sky was sometimes yellow and I could not breathe. Mom was pregnant with Debbie, and Gary and I rode in the backseat separated by a round tank full of Dad's tropical fish. Dad had a job with Sealright, Inc which made paper milk cartons. Sealright was a polyethylene packing subsidiary of Phillips 66. The petroleum company. I was rather proud of myself for learning to say that, and to not laugh when adults would stare at me not knowing what to ask about that. Albuquerque smelled better. Then. Before all the freeways were built and the shape of the valley trapped the exhaust down near the ground in the winter months. We lived in the foothills. I could breathe. I learned that if I could see the air I could not. Still it was better than El Paso though I missed our trip...
Read more

Swimming

Image
For much of my college career my fitness workout was swimming on the B squad of the swim team. I remember it as the days before heated pools and women coaches. I also remember being so exhausted and cold I could only lean against the shower wall and throw up. Not exactly warm fuzzy images but I was in awesome shape. Needless to say it did not leave me with a overpowering desire to swim laps. Point of fact for years my swimming became really informal: Swimming to shore after the canoe tipped over, challenging my sister once a summer to across the lake and back, seeing how long I could back float without moving a muscle, and a scuba course. I also played around with other ways of staying fit: aerobics, bicycling, jogging, skiing and dance classes. All of which seem to be bad for the knees, back or feet. After my ski accident my physical therapist steered me back to the pool. Damn if I was going to swim laps! However, aqua fit was just getting rather seriously taken so I took it. It r...
Read more

The Pruning the Crown of Thorns

Image
Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f...
Read more