Day 4: Four Drawings and Half-Assed Ideas

Today was a cooler day, so I spent most of the day outside in the park. I started FOUR drawings. One is finished, but the other three I will finish tonight or in the morning. It took a bit to get my focus humming for this residency. I used observation drawing the last few days here as a vehicle to settle my mind and get into the flow. While these drawings will be for sale at my open studio (and on my website) on the 26th, I am more excited about the mixed media work I am about to dive into. Here is a studio picture of what I have brewing and a picture under the Oriental Spruce (so much sap! It was dripping!). I will post pictures tomorrow of the completed drawings I started today.

I’m currently reading Art From Your Core by Kate Kretz. It’s well worth your time. Rather than focusing on technique, Kretz delves into the deeper work of cultivating your artistic voice and sustaining it over a lifetime. That’s no small task. It’s easy to get a little lost or give it up entirely. Living into your creativity demands vulnerability and then rejection from the art world, which can be uncomfortable and, at times, defeating. The art world is different than the art life, as she explains so clearly. I am so grateful for this distinction! In chapter 17, “Feed Your Head,” she recommends “recording and collecting every little thing that moves you, even when you don’t know why…especially when you do not know why”. So I got this notebook for my half-assed ideas.

Here is her suggestion:

“Make a habit of accumulating and recording without judgment anything that speaks to your soul: images that attract you, phrases that resonate, interviews or quotes from other artists, events that you witness, dreams, lists, doodles, news items, films, books, even a scrap of fabric witha great color or pattern, a texture that draws your interest, or a film frame with an unusual composition. You want to grab anything that touches you in some way, even if it is unsettling, and no matter how disconnected or absurd it seems.”

She recommends a system “to record and collect things for future reference.” Here is mine, purchased at the local bookstore in Westerly, RI, Martin House Books.