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Anger, Covid-19, and Art

Untitled. Abstract following composition #11,
trying to find some peace and joy in these crazy times.
This morning I woke up angry. It started with the crow at 5 a.m., and I never got back to sleep. But really it might have been the day before, when I went to work in my studio and decided on four things I wanted to get done. I tackled the hard one first, a full-scale drawing for a "real" painting I'm working on. That took an hour and a half, at which time I was tired, hungry, and had a headache. I never got back to the studio to finish the other three.

I enjoy drawing, and this morning when I looked at the drawing, it actually made me smile. So I'm not sure why I was so angry about my studio time yesterday. I drew on drawing paper instead of directly on my painting, so I can reuse it for future paintings. It was time well spent! I think my anger (maybe it's just frustration) has something to do with how "easy" making art is for everyone else and how challenging it is for me. I really want to just find the joy in art making (but I also want to create an awesome painting/masterpiece).

Of course, then there's everything in the world to be angry about: pandemic and death, violence and rioting, weak leadership. I guess today it was just overwhelming for me. So I reminded myself that the only thing I can control is myself (sort of, on a good day), and after breakfast, I went for a long walk, showered, then went back to the studio. This time, though, my goal was to enjoy myself, which meant NOT working on the "real" painting (stress! resistance! yes, fear, sigh) and instead doing something different.

Composition #11, a 5-minute abstract.
I challenged myself to create an abstract value study in a cruciform armature, and I gave myself only 5 minutes to get it done. I actually set my Apple watch, and when the alarm went off, I stopped. Not a brilliant value study but good enough to slap some crappy paint around.

The next part of the challenge was to pick a color palette from the crappy paint I have—odds and ends from other people, samples from who knows where, colors I would most likely not buy. One tube was a baby blue. Seriously! (Last week I was complaining to my husband that I must have bought the baby blue before I understood pigment and color mixing, but he informed me that he bought it 25 years ago because he wanted to paint a blue sky. Whew, that's bad. Like I said, crappy paint.)

I put on Sirius's The Blend and started painting, with only two goals: enjoy myself and follow the value study. And I'm happy to say, I did both! Even more astonishing, I like my little abstract painting, so much so that I signed it. And now I know that I need to practice signing, because that really didn't work out the way I envisioned.

All in all, despite all the emotional turmoil, I still managed to get a little art in, and I feel happier for it.

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