Kitchen Mural

This must be my lucky week; first I finished the silver vase painting and tonight I finally wrapped up the mural (I started in August) in my kitchen. Where the spurt of energy came from, I have no idea, but I'm thrilled to have a clean slate to start next week off with! Maybe it'll be a 2 week lucky streak.

Working with acrylics sitting inside the sink made for a tough project. Not my medium, not an easy posture to paint from. However, it's done and I can finally get the painting gear out of the kitchen. No procrastinators here, uh uh!

Thanks for stopping by- Alice

Bouquet

Finished, FINALLY finished! I may hack off the top 3 inches, but that'd be all I'd be willing to do. This has taken ages and I'm thrilled to be done.

Thanks for stopping by! Alice

When the Work Gets Too Precious

Does your work ever get so 'precious' that you lose sight of its importance? I lost perspective on this one and got so wrapped up in perfection that I stopped enjoying it. So I quit working on it, have stayed too busy to spend time on it and began to dread picking up my brushes. Silly, right?

This morning a good friend and artist associate, Andra Jensen, gave me some great advice. She said, "#1 Lower your expectations. I get stuck like that all the time. It often has to do with my expectations. You might be holding in your heart that it has to be one of your favorites ever, or a masterpiece, where it might help calm you to think of it as a study, or an academic/practice piece. (You could always cut it up later.) It might not be your favorite, but I can pretty surely guarantee it will be someone else's."

Oh. Of course. She is exactly right. And so, work will continue and all will be well with the world again. Thanks, Andra!

And thank you for stopping by- Alice