Creative Growth

I'm often asked if I paint every day (I do) and how long it takes to create a painting...and that's a tough question to answer.  Just because I paint daily doesn't mean that a painting is completed daily.  In fact, there is just as much work that ends in the trash heap as is shown publicly.  I worked on abstraction for several years before connecting it with my canoes, and no, I never publicly shared the abstraction.  It's not quite as painful if I'm working on paper but a stretched canvas is tough to let go of (or burn in a cathartic fire)...especially when I'm not stretching them myself as the cost is quite high.  Last Thursday I shared a photo of a couple of small tins of paint, that alone costs over $500 but I have to say, it is all worth every penny. 

This year I have been making a point of sketching daily and this morning I ended up cutting out more than a dozen pages from the sketchbook to toss.  It's not that I'm ashamed of the work, although it can be really terrible.  It's just that this is part of my growth in my creative process.  Early on I learned to let go of what isn't working for me, a hard lesson but valuable.  If I don't experiment, take a chance, try something new, I will remain stagnate.  If I didn't try or remained exactly where I began, I do know that there would still be those who would support what I do BUT I know that I wouldn't be happy...not like I am when I take a leap of faith.

So...painting every day is good, what I paint every day is not always so good.  And that's okay.  Though it does mean that I can't really pin point how long it takes to create a painting.  Every step that I take leads to the next...and sometimes it's a step back...but it's still a step.  In the end it's part of my creative growth...which is all good.