Love What You Do.

This morning I really enjoyed Robert Genn's newsletter in which he discusses how fickle we can be in our society - in everything, including art.  Fads come and go and come back again.  And two of the things I have learned in my twenty-five years as an artist is that...
a) it's like chasing your tail to try to figure out what's going to be the 'next best thing', and
b) it makes me terrribly unhappy when I even attempt to contemplate doing that.

I paint because I love colour and canvas.  I paint chairs and canoes because I enjoy it, because it is ingrained in my DNA.  Period.  No need to worry about what goes on outside of my happy little world.  I don't worry about marketing because I did that once upon a time and ended up wasting so much money and time and joy.  I just do what I love.  I love to paint.  I love to write about it, too.  And I know that when I follow my heart, I do connect with someone else's - and if I don't, that's okay, too, because I love what I do.  In closing his newsletter, Mr. Genn comments that 'We are what we are and we paint what we want, and when we lose sight of this we sell our souls.'  I whole-heartedly agree.  And I loved the quote he selected by Louis Armstrong, 'There is no such thing as 'on the way out' as long as you are doing something interesting.'  Amen.