Man oh man! I can't settle down, for the life of me! Every morning, my aim is to clear the decks and do some major series or exploration work, and every day I flit from station to station… a little chainmaking, some quick wax application, oh wait! this needs a flick of paint or no! what it REALLY needs is a copper back and some rivets. Oh. But I need some stronger wire. Let's go online and order some! Geezzzzz!
So far this year...and January is all but over!... I've made some wire and stone fripperies, a Thing with Wings, repurposed some plaster works, played around with a monoprint from the flurry of last Spring, started some encaustic pieces and not much has been finished.
What the heck is going on here?!!?
The second I thought I had to be a "profitable" artist is the second I killed my creative juice. Now don't get me wrong. All the above is still "creative". Prolific even. But it is not work that is deeply satisfying. Again. Don't get me wrong. I love being a Maker of Things. And seeing a string of completed little Fripperies makes me smile. But. When work burbles up from deep down, from that connection with Other (read: the Universe, my muse, God, the Creator, whatever works for you) when time stands still and the art seems to create itself? That is the stuff I'm here for. THAT is Creative Juice. Life giving. And, gotta say, it's been awhile.
And I know that playing with stones and wire and metal isn't really the path back to that sort of creating. Even though I do love it. I think maybe it's because so much of three dimensional work is problem solving. I need to stay present in order to fix This to That. And while there is a definite satisfaction upon finding the perfect solution, it has yet to compare with the effervescent fulfillment I get when making images/paintings.
I. Am. Privileged.
I know it and am eternally grateful that I'm in the enviable position of not HAVING to sell my work in order to eat. And there is tremendous guilt. Because even though I need to create in order to survive (or risk eating myself inside out), it still feels superfluous somehow. And I'm having a really hard time finding my way around that. And guilt-ridden for even thinking it. Let alone saying it out loud. Am I the only one?
I suspect the answer is to leave the explanations and platitudes and guilt-ridden self-talk at the door and make the work that makes my heart sing. There has to be worth in that.