Part 1 Follow my progress...I'm starting a new painting.

I've been "dancing" with this canvas for a couple of days now - but we are not hearing the same music...LOL.  I've been painting pretty small for a while and have this nice big canvas and I want to cover it with luscious color and texture and I will want you to oooh and ahhh.  Hmmmm.

We haven't become one yet and so I am pushing paint from one side of the canvas to the other side hoping there will be an interesting collision and this painting will start taking shape.  I know it will happen, but I don't know when.

I made a commitment to myself in the last couple of years is to paint the way I want to - make the strokes and marks that I want, that feel good to me.  Actually it was a decision to give in to what I do naturally, and just like with the paint, let what I do naturally take over.

My theory is that if I do that, and am persistent, that I will create work that I feel very good about and that also someone else will connect with it.  I will no longer paint what I think will be popular or in a way that I think will be popular. That was hard to give up - following what I thought would be "popular" - because, yes, it is important to me to sell paintings.

Those actually were hard decisions.  It means I have to free myself from so many things.  For approximately the past year I have been able to paint consistently for the first time in my life.  It has really changed everything.  I began to understand that my specific hand and eye will create something with my spin on it - and that will be satisfying and sometimes exhausting, but it is a big step forward for me since I have never truly trusted myself.

Deep subject.  And I wasn't trying to discover any of that, but in the process of working to become a better painter, I have learned some things about my life process. And to get even deeper there seems to be a correlation with this painting, and how I do it, and the themes in my life.  More on that later.

For now I am waiting for the dance to begin with this canvas and the paint.  I'm just getting warmed up, following the steps I know and some time soon we will hear the same music.  It's pretty exciting when that happens. Beautiful things appear.

​Be sure to watch Part 2 and don't miss Part 3.
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