Accumulative Effect

I decided about a couple weeks ago as the stock markets crashed and the economic news bombarded us with gloom and doom to turn the news off and paint. I began working on a challenge at http://www.wetcanvas.com/ by doing a daily painting to work on some artistic goals. The above is the accumulative effect of this effort. The effect you can't see, but I can feel, is the relaxation that comes from art and painting. I look over my daily paintings and recent finished work and I can see where I need work or things I like as well as stuff I want to toss out. I thought how art so often mirrors life. It is always a work in progress, isn't it? Why do we expect perfection in ourselves without the process? In art I enjoy the experimenting and the ups and downs of the creative process but in life its harder to give ourselves the freedom to just let be and let things evolve.

In the creative process down times are often the greatest periods of growth as new ideas incubate and you break out of old patterns. You hunker down and re-evaluate what you've done, where you are and where you want to go. I imagine as a country we are going thru a similar time but it does not have to be gloom and doom as the media wants us to believe. We don't need to be ruled by fear.

The painting on the wall of the little girl is probably the one that started this process for me a few weeks ago-- although I had no intention of doing a daily painting than! I had not even considered it. That painting is titled 'Faith Like A Child' and I think thats where it starts. You hold on to that kernel of child like faith as you go thru the bumps and bruises of growth.

What am I going to be doing now? I will keep painting for one. Second, I will take some of these, as is, to my art studio in Canton to sell. Others I will continue to refine to take to my studio at another time. Others I will file away to look back on and say, I remember when.....