FOCUS ON GOALS... NOT RESOLUTIONS!

Hard to believe, but this is the last day of 2011.  Towards the end of the year, I start thinking about what I want to focus on for the coming year.  Keeping my attention on a few things and exploring them in depth helps me to be more creative and expand my expertise in these areas so that they become ingrained in my thinking and working without conscious thought.  I think of it as directed growth.  One of my focused ideas for 2012 is to have every painting contain an 80/20 ratio of contrasts.  When I look at art work, the ones that capture my attention the most are the ones with the greatest contrast.  To achieve this will require considerable conscious thought and planning on my part and seems like an exciting challenge.  I also plan to work with one image all year and see how many variations I can come up with.   This doesn't mean that it is the only image I will work with for the year but it will be the dominant one.  The last idea that I wish to explore in detail for the year is the integration of a complex and interesting background with the figure/head.  In traditional portraiture, the background is usually just supportive of the head and figure and non-descript.  I want to try some non-traditional ideas.

The last project I have for this year (today!) is to create a book of my work for the past year.  I think this is a great way to have a record of each year and is fairly simple to do with all the wonderful technology available on the internet.  I am going to use Blurb but there are a number of places that you can create these self published books.

Today I wrote out my goals for the coming year on a piece of paper.  I will put it away and check it next Dec. 31st.  A goal is only a dream if it is not written down.  Some of these goals require that I create a strategy to make them happen.  Some of them require that I only show up each day and work.  It is amazing to see at the end of the year how many things came to realization because I just showed up and did my part leaving the Universe to do it's part.

I am excited for the new year to begin!  I will be taking a new workshop from Gerald Brommer using tons and tons of 3-d collage materials, slathering it with gesso and then painting with watercolor or acrylic!  Then, I am taking Mike Bailey's Watercolor Beyond the Obvious class for the 4th time.  Some people have taken it as many as 12 times (I think that is the record).  People sometimes ask me why I am in a workshop when I teach them myself.  I hope I never get to the place where I can't be learning something new.  I love being the teacher and sharing what I know and I love being the student and learning from others, both the instructor and my fellow students.  I also learn new ideas for presenting my material in my workshops by observing different instructors.

In closing, I would like to share with you a quote from Edward Betts which expresses my concept of the kind of art I wish to make.  I am going to make a beautiful sign for my studio so I can be inspired by it each day.

"There is an obligation to go beyond craftsmanship, to push the medium beyond descriptive imitation toward the transformation of nature into solely pictorial terms, to form images that have urgency and communicative power and in which poetry or geometry is of more concern than an unimaginative list of visual facts."

Thank you to all the wonderful people who have followed my blog this year and been so generous with your support of my work and efforts.  May you all have a healthy, happy and creative year full of joy in
the making of art!