Promises Kept

I have moved to Scotland. I am not just visiting this time. I have moved. I am not sure when that will truly sink in or if it even needs to.

This is my third time to fly into Edinburgh. I spent four months here in 2012 and six in 2013. Each time I arrive it seems momentous on a very personal level. In 2012 it was my first time out of the country with my new passport and my first solo trip by plane. I was leaving my home town after the version of the arts organization I had been part for three years dissolved. A good time to leave.

In 2013 I had a plan to discover my Scottish roots, see the Highlands and make art that explored the real and imagined stories of my ancestors. I wanted to immerse myself in Edinburgh as if I truly lived there during that six month visit. My plan worked, it became my home in my heart. A couple of days before I left, I made a promise on top of the warm slate tiles of the Campbell Castle in Dollar, Scotland. I kissed my hand, touched the tile, closed my eyes and silently in the afternoon sunshine, promised I would be back. I didn’t know how or when but I promised.

In 2014, after what I can only consider my year of loneliness and poverty in my hometown, I am back in Scotland! I arrived one year and two weeks after I made that castle promise. This time I happily arrived as Stewart Bremner’s wife with my new visa that is good for two and a half years. This time, I cleared out my entire family home of everything but a small padlocked storage room of select possessions and arrived with just two suitcases and a carry on. This time, I arrived debt free for the first time in four years - selling eighty percent of ones possessions, a car and paintings has it’s perks! This time I am free to work and really start again. This time I arrived as an immigrant. This Campbell has come home.

At forty-two years old I may know what I am truly capable of for the first time in my life. I am grateful for the past four years for giving me that gift. I thank the moments of poverty, loneliness, tears, long distance, loss and self doubt. I thank the moments of self reliance, independence, perseverance, dreams and dedication. I celebrate the thrill of being alive to feel these ups and downs. I celebrate the strength and courage this love for myself and for Stewart can inspire. I celebrate my friends and family who rose to the occasion to support me with encouragement, care, breaks on the rent, meals and drinks out on them and gifts that helped when I felt the lack. I celebrate my dear friends that helped me in the last months when I was completely overwhelmed and helped to make sure it all got done in the end. When I see something beautiful, I will see it for you. When I rise to the occasion when I am scared, I will rise for you. When I make art, I will make it for you…

Change of address....with an edit!

Feb 2016: Update! I started a new blog once I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland in late September of 2014 over on my website but I found I wasn't writing as much I wanted to and so returned to my Studio blog here on blogger in December of 2015 where I am again, writing every Friday. 

I have added the 10 posts that sporadically spanned my first six months in Edinburgh from my website to this blog (there are no photos on these posts) if you really want want to see the photos with the text please visit my website. http://www.meganchapman.com/a-cup-of-tea-and-a-blether.

Thank you for being flexible! It's so good to be back here!

Megan

www.meganchapman.com

Waiting no more...

Going through my studio archives looking at old drawings

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

― Alice Walker, Living by the Word

I received my U.K Visa this week! That means that once my affairs are settled here and my possessions I am willing to part with are sold off that I can move to Edinburgh, Scotland and live with Stewart!

Here's to new adventures, the future and more! Art changes lives, I know this much is true.

These boots are made for walking

The Pink Tunic
Tamara de Lempicka
1927

Hello Lovely Readers! 

I hope you have had a good week. I have thought about art, talked about art and looked at art. I have had a few ideas for a couple of new series. I even sold a small $10 piece this week from the sale section of my Etsy shop. 

I have also felt like I am not doing enough, making enough and especially not selling enough. I have gone down a spiral of doubt and shame surrounding my art career at present. I have questioned myself, my worth and the viability of being a self employed artist. Just another week in the studio.

The highlight of the business week was having one of my pieces featured on the front page of Etsy for an hour, which drove several hundreds of views to my shop which felt really great but there were no sales as a result of the excitement.

It is hard not to take personally or to wonder where things went amiss or what I could be doing differently besides working more, putting on an even braver face or learning the ends and outs of whatever the latest marketing tool that is hot right now on the interwebs. Part of me just wants to start over with a different business model in this new economic climate.

And maybe that's just what I'll do...

Today, I will leave you with some work by Tamara de Lempicka that has been inspiring me this past week.

Nude with Dove
Tamara de Lempicka
1927

The Orange Scarf
Tamara de Lempicka
1927

Tamara de Lempicka
Nana de Herrera
1928/1929

The Green Turban
Tamara de Lempicka
1929

Today I am an artist

To see and speak ©2011 Megan Chapman 

"You are what you do today, not what you did yesterday" this is a quote from a book about money found on my walk in the park this morning.

I needed that message. The universe speaks to me in unexpected ways, perhaps it does to you as well. I am not always listening but I am always glad when I do. 

Once home from the park, I read some more from the book and then I made some art just for me. Today I am an artist. This week I did other purposeful art related things. I submitted my work to a large agency (who knows what will come of it but I did it). I looked through some of my older work in the studio and decided to have a sale. I organized my Etsy shop and decided to have a sale there too. I met with a patron yesterday and about her special commission I painted for her and she seemed pleased.

In my life, I look for the lessons to be learned and these lean years are providing me with many. Today I am an artist. I hope I will be tomorrow as well.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next week, keep fighting.

If you are looking for my Summer Sale. Click here. Please send me an email at megancha@gmail.com if you are interested in one of those works, I would love them to find good homes as I downsize.

If you are looking for my Etsy $10 Sale. Click here. Everything is affordable in my Etsy shop, enjoy a rummage but those fourteen pieces are especially so.

It's all the rage...

Another place and time, Another palette

There are two things that have sat me down to write this blog today on the actual day that my blog is supposed to hit the virtual news stand. The first, is the new Interpol song on repeat (more on that later) and the promise to myself that I get an iced-chai soy latte once I have written this post.

In other news, I have a heart monitor on my chest for the next 48hrs. It should be a metaphor for something. No worries, instead it's just a test.

So back to Interpol. If you have been a long time reader of this blog you will know that the band was a muse, a talisman, a curvy path to a type of renewed youth as well as marking the beginning of the end to my past life. They inspired a hope, a fever, a desire, a sense of place and many paintings and a star struck love that saw me through the dark times. I owe whole series of paintings to the band.

In September they will be releasing a new album entitled, "El Pintor,"an anagram! As always Interpol fits like an old shoe. Like many fans will say, the first two albums are the best and I go along for the ride and mine for gems on the last two. The third album afforded me the luxury of seeing them three times and while they were supporting their last album, I saw them once. Perhaps the next time I see them will be in Scotland in support of their fifth. They are artists; they evolve and change and I watch and appreciate as a fan does.

Why am I going on about this band yet again in my blog and not talking about painting and art?

1. All my energy is going towards surviving right now and my head space hasn't really been in the zone for art making. Maslow's hierarchy of needs stuff.

2. I am hoping the band is still my good luck charm.

Do I get my latte yet?

Where to begin...

A collection of fears. Created June 2nd

I can't catch up so I will just have to start in the now.

My dear readers if there are any of you left, I am afraid I have been absent for a long while here at my studio blog. So much has happened in the six weeks I have been "away." Where to begin? Today, because if I focussed on all the yesterdays I would never write again.

This blog is a record of my art life and if I haven't been writing for six weeks where has my art life gone? It is still here, just perhaps dimly lit or stuffed in a box in the attic to be opened on a rainy day. Well, that day has come. Let's discover it again, together.

I have felt never more free and never more censored in the past four years of my life. I have felt never more rich and I never more poor as well. I have walked through a mysterious time and one day I will tell you all about it. Suffice it to say, because of this I am forever changed, as is my art and the way I write about it and share it.

Let's get to the nuts and bolts:

Art.

What a mess. I am not sure what to do with mine currently, I don't know where or what is the best market is for it or how to proceed and how I can continue to make it. I am represented by a couple of galleries and I have my Etsy shop. However, that is not enough to sustain oneself if my only source of income is from my work. Do not let the tone fool you, this is not the tone of someone giving up. This is the tone of a practical and honest artist that has a BFA and better sales skills than most and has been consistently making, selling, showing and talking about art for the past twenty years. I am in analytic mode and I will figure it out.

Life.

What a beautiful thing. I am not sure what to do with mine currently. What I do know is that I am in love and I got married June 14th to Stewart Bremner. It was a beautiful day. Soon after our wedding, we started the U.K. Visa process which is arduous, expensive and required a lot of time and energy. The finished application was received in England on July 4th (happy independence day!) and we should find out if it was approved in the next 3-4 weeks. If approved, I will be moving to Scotland! With a marriage proposal on June 4th, a wedding ten days later and then a visa to apply for, one might quickly realize another reason why my blog has fallen to the wayside temporarily.

I may go back in time and fill in the gaps with writing about particular moments I can remember from the past 6 weeks or I may not. Just sitting down here to write has been helpful to my psyche. Time is so weird and moves so fast but sitting down to write and process it makes it slow momentarily. Writing is important, just like making art. Soon, I will do both more regularly but for today this is enough. Thanks for stopping by. Until next week, the world needs you and your art!

Fear # 5 and Fear # 6 two of my favorites