Your Roots

Sometimes I wonder how I got from the above painting to where I am now.  Some call it growing, some experience, some developing your style, getting better at your craft, blah, blah, blah......Here's what I remember about the above painting.  It was effortless.  I wasn't thinking about being a famous artist.....one who is in every Hallmark store.....one who makes $1000's at art shows.  I was just painting.  Happy little birdie paintings.  Somewhere along that line of happy it became a business.  When you run a business whether it's a McDonald's or an etsy shop you have to make decisions that are business in nature.  At some point between the above painting and the Jenni I am now I've lost sight of how much joy painting brings to my daily life.  I've gotten very bogged down in the numbers.  I know a good painting when it feels effortless to create, not forced or created because of a show deadline and I need to fill a tent.  Another sign of a good piece, when I get done I want to keep it.  That's my meter.   If you follow my 52 Canvases project you may have noticed a subject matter shift.  After finishing a rather large custom painting last night this whole idea hit me.  It was a simple painting,  big...and yet the finished piece is captivating.  Because it's me.  I painted it from the depths of the me that is an artist.  And it felt good.

I really love to paint.  Perhaps you don't see the struggle I have with the subjects, with my art.  I suppose in blog world you can give the reader any point of view you want because you are the author of that blog.  I like to think here in this journal I share my whole art self with you.  Not just the pretty and the good.  I like to give you a more rounded picture of my life as an artist.  A reader posted one of the best comments on my blog yesterday, she said that my painting looked, "smooth and effortless".  That my friends is my goal.  To create simple, happy, effortless paintings straight from the heart.  I intend to get back to my roots with painting.  I've been studying my first paintings from 2007 and finding that they were more thoughtfully created than I'd given them credit for.  I guess sometimes we need to rediscover what we already know in order to get back to where we need to be.