WILLY NILLYING

So finally a day of clarity.  I am looking forward to two days of art at High Hand, not taking a class...NO.  Showing my art and working there demonstrating what I do in my home studio room every day.  I don't call my art room a studio very often because it's a bedroom in my home, not a worldly place, but to ME it is everything.   I have no formal education beyond high school, just life experience and all that I have done for myself to learn as I go choosing my topics not having them dictated to me.

While I am so thankful for my mentors, my friends, my family and people who have shared knowledge and opinions with me; there is another part of this that has been bothersome.  I feel that I am breaking free of it now in my last act.  It is fear, I am breaking free of fear.

Painting for the last 20 years, I have done many seminars, classes, workshops with numerous painters, educators, friends, professional artists.  I have explored many media; oil, acrylics, pastels, pencils, crayons, graphite, collage, 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, etc etc.  I have taken in all the wonderfulness of these, I have been successful with many of these, I have found my joy with these.

Art rules, I know them well. Nothing in the corners, nothing in the exact middle of the composition, use color to take the viewer around the painting, know perspective, know shadow, form, line, texture, etc etc.  This just begins the story of my problem with rules.

FEARFUL art rules which I know even better:  don't use straight black, never use straight white, oh my gosh bubble gum pink is PUKE, mix your own colors--never use them right out of the tube, prepare your canvas in this way ONLY, don't let me hear that scraping, don't ever copy, no copying out of magazines, no copying other artists style, do not willy nilly mix art materials, be aware of archival processes because the piece must last FOREVER, etc etc.

TODAY I used straight black, I am about to use some straight white on a piece, I used a couple colors out of the bottle today.  I am not caring about anything lasting forever, I don't want to last forever so why would I want that for my creations?  I have been loudly scraping all morning and even used a magazine picture in my collage work yesterday.  I am willy nillying all over the place today getting to my JOYFUL PLACE.

• YYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!

My Art Room

This is the door to my art room.  There's a sculpture of Andy Warhol by Karen Fulk at the top, to the left is a Mexican frame with a sculpture in it by Kanika Marshall.  The hearts done by my little orange haired grandson, Nevvy.  Just looking at this door makes me happy I guess because I know what good stuff is inside the room.

I open the door and the smell is delicious in there.  The fragrance is a combination of clean painted walls, oil paint and acrylic paints that I use almost every day mixed with a citrusy perfume.  The lemon and lime fragrance is from the handy wipes that I keep ready at all times.   Smell is the first of my senses that is aroused, then I turn on the 9 flood lights that give me the feeling of sunshine on my shoulders.  There are usually a couple paintings in progress on the wall which make me happy because that means I have work to do.  Even if they are only so-so, even if they are totally ugly...the new day brings fresh energy and I dive into the process.