Warrior Girl- Rowena Murillo

Of Starstuff
pen and paper, 5x8"
3/100 in 100 challenge. 6/12/10

I've decided I'm going to try doing the 100 in 100 again. Last year... about this time, as I was reminded by a friend, I committed to creating 100 paintings in 100 days, and I invited anyone else to come along on the challenge. I achieved my goal, but not without adjusting my expectations of myself, and realizing that I was doing a lot more art than just the pieces I was counting within my totals.

I'm not limiting myself to doing just 100 paintings. I've decided that any piece of art will do. I've decided not to judge my art as less worthy or more worthy because of it's provenance, its intention, its medium, the time it took to create, or it's formality.

A sketch I did while I was at work will count as much as a large scale painting on wood (I have one planned). Finishing a piece that I started months before will count as much as starting and finishing in one day.

I did this painting while watching tv, as it got later and later and I got more and more tired. I didn't know what I was doing when I started it, but I felt compelled to finish it before I went to bed.

It started out quite like the doodles I used to do when I was in school. The eye and the scrolls and the floopy winglike paisleys. What does it mean? I don't know. And that's fine.

Going off on intuition is maybe a way to gain access to the things that have kind of been hiding. The things that have been tied up by the demands of the everyday and the necessary stresses of a busy life.

Me? I'm trying to release some of the things I've been holding under wraps, waiting for a time when things will be more stable or more secure or when I will have a handle on it all.

I begin to think that I will never have a handle on it all. Or if I do sometimes, I will only have that handle for a brief time until I go back to being confused again. This might be called life.

Confusing. And yet... cosmically speaking... not. (ah ha. I got this post back to the drawing! We are starstuff, and all the craziness and stress we put on ourselves all the time? cosmically speaking, it just don't mean a damn.)

All we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and continue to do our best. Keep it up. Move forward.

Any one want to try to challenge themselves with 100 works of creativity in 100 days? 100 drawings/paintings? 100 poems? 100 new meals from scratch? 100 self portraits? 100 photos?
100 pages in a novel? I'm doing it a lot more casually than I did last time, a factor of my transitional life, but hey, I'm still doing it.

And that's the important part.

PS I found my official rules for 100 in 100 days. I did a lot of thought on this project last year. This year it just snuck up on me.