Trying to make my way back

The puzzle says "seek magic every day." I do. 

Hello, lovely studio blog readers. 

I hope you are well. Today I am going to try to make my way back to you. If you have been following this blog for quite some time you will know that it is a fundamental element of my art practice and how I share information and my process with my patrons, fellow artists, and art lovers. I have a substantial gap in my posts currently. I don't like that so my one task today is to slowly fill in some of the gaps, starting with the most recent and working backwards. This break was necessary for a multitude of reasons but the longer the break, the harder it is to return. This has happened with my blog, my video visits, and all my regular postings on social media as well as the most important thing of all, creating the art. 

Not making art is a complex issue - if I don't make art, what do I have to say or share here on the studio blog, what do I have to make my Tuesday Studio Video Visits about? What do I have to share on my social media accounts? The answer is actually plenty. There are loads of paintings you probably haven't seen or you have forgotten about. I could write more in-depth about them or make more videos about those pieces and the process involved in making them. 

However, social media and internalised capitalism are a sick mix - we have this urgency to stay current, fresh, relevant, and to churn out shite just to have something to post and share. I don't know about you, but I didn't "get into" art to become a machine. Paintings take time, bodies of work and the exploration of themes take time to flesh out - not everything is made for the "wham, bam, click, heart, scroll" world of today. 

However, I also know that as someone who has called myself an artist for half of my life on this planet, I need to do the work. I have been compelled and called to do the work and then that calling went a bit quiet and now I am going to have to coax it back out onto the playing field. 

This is going to require faith, optimism, hard work, and time in the studio. It is going to require finding something inside myself that became fearful, sad, uneasy or more honestly, pissed off. I will need to work to steady all of this to create again. 

So, here I go - filling one gap, writing one post, and expressing a few thoughts. Finding my way back. 

I hope you are well, happy, and inspired and if not, tomorrow is another day. Keep fighting and thank you for being here.