The Beauty of Home

It's time to recommit regular painting practice.  

To calmly pivot from frantically seeking the most productive marketing technique.

To pointedly return to my daily work of mark making.

It's time to stop getting in the car and driving to the mountains, that I DO love, when I have a local world to paint steps from my door. 

It takes time to process learning, especially things you learn about visual art. Mental knowledge is not the same thing as mastery of a craft. The head and the heart AND the hand are all connected, and as an artist, it's necessary to learn how to allow all three to do their bit in allowing something pleasing to emerge on a board. 

I know I've learned a lot in my fairly short time as a committed painter. I'm still trying to work through how to make the most pleasing marks with my brush, and that's really what 2D art is - mark making. 

Lori Putnam, an artist whose work I enjoy, took several oil painting workshops years ago at the beginning of her transformation to fine artist. After those workshops, she decided fine art was her path, so she quit a successful graphic design business of her own. Then she and her husband sold their belongings and moved to Italy for 8 months so Lori could paint every day and work out her own mark making process. 

I understand the desire to just get out and paint for an extended time without interruption to try and figure out my own mark making. I have no plans to leave the country, or even my state, because luckily, I live in an area where I can walk a mile and find thousands of subjects. 

In the last several years, I've studied under several great teachers, and I've had time to internalize what they tried to teach me. Donna Bland was my first painting teacher and she communicated the basics of how to manipulate the darks to emphasize objects in the light. Guido Frick makes his brush dance which is something I have to consciously remember when I get so serious about a painting. Eric Jacobsen emphasizes design above all and gave me (without realizing it) even more permission than Guido to get loose. And finally an artist mentor of mine, David Barranti, out of Atlanta, teaches painters like me just how important is a good foundation in drawing and trusting your eyes.  All of these lessons must be absorbed by the head, the heart and the hand. 

I am scheduled to take a short plein air workshop with Laurel Daniel through the Austin Museum of Art - Laguna Gloria Art School. Yet mostly, I come back to an idea that I've already known: I just need time. And I'm thankful I live in a place like the Texas Hill Country. 

So I'm taking the pressure off. I'm parking the car. I'm working on home projects. I'm planting a garden.  I'm taking a break from the infinite search for the most effective marketing tool.  And I'm focusing on painting the Hill Country where I live. 

I hope you all can find something to take your attention off current events in the world today. We all need breaks from the seemingly never-ending series of crises. I fully intend to go outside and breathe the air and meditate on nature, even if it's a mesquite tree wrapped in a cedar bush.

Take Care, 

Go Outside...