Tag: creative voice

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HELP.

I’m So Disracted and My Worst Enemy!

I really wanted to learn to blog so the idea of this site was born. It was fortunate to have a son in IT( techy business stuff) and he designed this site for me. Whew! My plan was to show the world my work as an artist and drive people to my site. My son is a tech genius, although he will deny it. Steve studied marketing in college and but actually worked IT in the resort industry and later in publishing. Bored with his job, he established his own company and created this blog site for me. Remarkably, the first computer we bought him in college was an Apple2E with drop down menus. Amazed, I wonder how he learned to function in the difficult world of analytics, coding and other blah-blah-blah. Where did he get the genius bug? Definitely, it was not from me.

So who am I really?

By nature, I am a creative person of reasonable intelligence with a thirst to learn new ways to create while seeking truth about my world. I am a practical no frills woman who is comfortable in my skin. By the way, it took me a lifetime to achieve this since I was always sensitive to what others thought of me. Deep within my center is a Bohemian color-crazed artist who loves pattern, bold colors and weird things hanging from my studio ceiling that have no function except that I like to look at them. When I retired from teaching visual arts for 24 years, I inherited about 200 origami birds of all colors that were made by students in the Literature class. You can see them in the photo before I braved the ladder to get them on the ceiling! Added to that are ribbons and colorful fabric leis that I collected from a school prom I chaperoned. My studio is a smallish hodge-podge of color and memories that expresses my life experiences and fires me up to create.

My studio is well lit with natural light but small and cramped but functions. See the garland of birds?

I am a mixed media artist that likes to try new mediums to express myself (sometimes all media at once… Well, maybe not all). This goes goes with my undercover Bohemian artist nature, which I hid for ages under a conservative wrapping. I have never been wild. I never did weed and alcohol because I was wise enough and didn’t need to patch myself up with those external feel-good things that might get me trapped in a habit I would regret. Yet, the Woodstock era was mine and ‘everybody’ did weed and more. Tie dye, head bands , pink lenses on glasses and wild hair were the rage.

I envision myself as practical, level-headed and a deep thinker who likes to figure stuff out. Actually, at this late stage in my life (age 79), I find I have a powerful motivation to work on an art career then I tell myself to ‘chill’ and drop it. That ‘fire in my belly’ begins to burn again and I NEED to take up this radical business idea. Good grief!

A lot of time is spent in my studio and I have about 50-60 paintings stored in portfolios. May I reveal a hidden secret that I am risking to tell the world on this blog. I am timid to approach people, art businesses and galleries to offer my work. Taking that initiative makes my blood run cold. Yet, I KNOW I am a good artist. I KNOW my work has quality and can hold up in today’s market but I’m afraid I will not meet the business demands it all will put on me. Will I bail out when others are counting on me. Afraid. Af-raid. Afr-aid. However I say it, it doesn’t go away. I have a fear of success. My present excuse is that I am too old to reinvent myself. If you are experiencing the same emotions and have moved on, may I offer many words of congratulations. Just tell me how you overcame the fear of starting over?

Alas, I am stuck in a new era of technology I never learned in school yet a three year old feels comfortable with. I hate phones and social media that drives the world market today. I really do not want to be on Linkedin, which took forever to get off! I rarely Tweet, Instagram or Facebook unless I want to see photos of my family’s grand kids. Do you think there is hope for me in business? I would need a mind miracle.
So, what do I do with the FIRE, the challenge, the drive?

There is one sliver of hope but haven’t done it yet. The question that was put to me was, “Are you sure you want to have a business?” An awesome, motivating art coach named Alyson Stanfield of Art Biz Success .com was revealed to me. I read most of her business blogs online and had some glimmer of hope that I would take her workshop on how to start an art business. I bought her book, IRBITS which is in its fourth printing. However, as a retired person living on an a small pension, I realized that I have very little capital to invest in a new business. Formerly, I had a retail business that ran out of capital. Trying to expand, I could not continue although it was breaking even after 3 years. This experience scared me.

At that time, women were not encouraged to be in business. I tried to float a bank loan to grow my venture. I was told by the bank officer to go home and just make it a hobby. “Women are not good business people.” Nowadays, that bank manager would be burnt at the stake for slander. Go Women!. That experience soured me and I lost belief in myself. This still hangs on me like a ball and chain. I know a bit about retail but less about marketing.

Where will this end up? At my elder-ish age, business seems like futility because I do not know how long I will have on this earth. I was never one to leave something unfinished. I have this stubborn persistence to complete what I started. I am a legacy builder and am hopefully an example for my grandchildren to never quit but to keep on, keeping on.

For those of you who have the ‘fire’ also, take the risk so you will never regret having missed a great opportunity to invest in your world and to bless others with your talents. To Alyson Stanford, you are the hope of many creative women like myself who don’t know where to start. Great going Gal and thanks.

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Self-Acceptance Builds Passion

Art is a high calling,
Fear is coincidental.
From ‘Art Without Fear’

“..Becoming an artist consists of learning to accept
yourself, which makes your work personal, and in
following your own voice, which makes your work
distinctive.”

If you need to get your head strait, read “Art Without Fear”, a book by Bayles and Ortlund. It deals with fear of non-acceptance when it comes to your art.  Friend, this was where I was years ago and it resulted in artist’s block, big time.

My breakthrough came when I decided to head for the hills of No. Carolina and take a workshop with Mary Todd Beam who was making a name for herself in the art world.  It was as if she gave me permission “play” in art and just copy what I saw. The result was freedom FROM myself.  I could use the colors I liked, not what the ‘local’ color really was.  I could ramp the colors up until they became a riot of patterns and shapes.  I could leave out parts, invent other parts, combine images or paint them in a circular composition.  I could do what I wanted…within reason.

Art still needs to have some basic principles to be of excellent quality. Does the word ‘excellent’ scare you?  Relax. For instance, you will need to understand composition and how colors react next to each other.  YouTube is a great resource for learning art principles.  Only don’t copy another’s work.

Copying other artist’s ideas really hurts the creative spirit. It is permissible if you are learning principles from the masters. Artists will actually go to museums to copy a master painting to understand their concepts. However, this is mainly for educational reasons.  Beware!  The net is filled with images and copying another artwork and making minor changes does not make it YOUR artwork.  I constantly had to explain this to my students.  They loved to copy art because it made them feel more secure.  So, I gave them the 70-30% rule. That meant seventy percent was to be their idea, enough so that the original artist could recognize it as theirs.

Coming back from the North Carolina workshop was my turning point.  I began to get accepted into national competitions and even had my work published in Rockport Publisher’s, ‘Best Of’ series.  At that point,  I was able to paint eight hours a day and was growing my style until funds ran out and I needed to return to teaching art in the public schools to sustain my art career.  Most artists have to be realistic and work. You will need to figure out your personal schedule. If you love to create, you will find a way. Just don’t stop.

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What is Artist Voice?

I am on voice rest for four days. I have laryngitis, an irritation of my vocal cords. When I answer the phone, people can’t hear me. They do not identify me, even as a family member. You see, our voice is part of who we are and I do not sound like ‘myself’.

Did you know the art we create also has a voice? It identifies us by our style, the colors we use, the forms and symbols we seem to incorporate again an again. I live in Florida and get to often visit to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg,FL. Dali’s symbols were the black ant, a flaming giraffe and wooden crutches and butterflies. I bought a mobile of butterflies there and it hangs in my studio. These were his symbols and it makes me think of him.

I will be referring to Creative Voice in more of my blogs because I realized that many artists do not even “see” their Voice. So what is ‘voice’? It is the quality of your art that seems to repeat itself in every artwork you make. It identifies you. I plan to also blog about why you seem to paint what you paint and how you respond to your preferences inwardly. This will help to define why you make the art you do. So visit often.