Singing and Silver Skies

Sing...Yes, Large Red Flower

80/100 in 100 Creative Challenge

Golden Fluid Acrylic on paper, Moleskine 5x8"

I'm into the flowers lately. I think the conceptual nature of Flying Girls have made me tired. I feel like I have to try so hard to make them mean something. With the flowers, I get to explore color and paint texture and composition and pleasing shapes and patterns (which I'm really digging lately) and just let it be. The meaning might come later.

For instance, I showed my uncle this painting and he said, "well! that really sings!" and I said, "yeah." And that's what it became.

This isn't really so diaristic as the Flying Girls seem sometimes, an extension of my own personal journey. I am exploring letting go of my things, listing some of these things on etsy as original art, not prints. Things that I will release for others to enjoy. It's kind of hard, especially when they are documenting my personal journey.

Brown Earth and Silver Sky Traveling

81/100 in 100 creative challenge

Golden Fluid Acrylic on Paper, Moleskine, 5x8"

Like the traveling series. These are also an exercise in letting go. I'm putting all of them up for sale as originals, even if I love them. Sometimes it is easier for me to let them go if I use metallic paint on them, because it doesn't reproduce well, and I can't sell them as prints. I don't know what that reasoning is about.

But I do like the airiness of them. I like the horizon in the distance and the feeling of movement. The peace. Like sitting in a train and watching the landscape go by. Nothing t to do but listen to your thoughts and write in your journal. I used to love long train rides. :)

One of the things I think is interesting about this painting is that it was done with the paint that was leftover on the palette from painting the Sing flower. The bright, electric red and orange and green, and cream, when blended turned into a subtle earth color. So much richer than just using a single paint color. When I had the wash of beige on the paper, I thought, now what can I turn this into? A traveling painting would work, I decided, and the contrasting color that popped into my head was silver. I know it's strange, beige and silver, but... I've seen it. In clouds, in distance. So I went with it.

Sometimes letting go of your expectations, letting go of compartamental thinking, throwing things together and seeing what comes of it, sometimes that really works out.

Sometimes it fails miserably... but isn't it better to take the chance and try the new, scary thing and have the 50/50 chance of making something great, than to always play it safe and never really reach your own potential? Because we know that we are not trying, and that gets into us, sits on us, that knowledge that we aren't going for it.

Take the chance. Try the new thing. Fail. Fail better.