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!