Cloud Travelling, and 100 Days of Creativity

Cloud Travelling

acrylic paint on found board, approx 3.5"x 12"

100/100 days creative challenge

I did it! 100 creative works in 100 days!

And I think I actually did it within 100 days.

I was not nearly as organized this time as I was the last few times I've done this. This time I just wanted to be creative and I counted food and plants and clothes. The first time it was just paintings that I allowed myself. I enjoyed having all those paintings, enjoyed the journey my paintings went on over the course of those previous 100 days, but this time, I needed a different journey.

You see, I've also spent this 100 days in a brand new house. While doing my 100 days, I was also setting up the house and the new routines, and then starting my son in kindergarten. Life has been very much in the living these past 100 days and I'm glad I did the creative challenge, or I might have let the creativity slide and just never taken out my paints at all or pushed myself into other media.

My challenge kept me in the creative conversation.

Yay 100 works in 100 days creative challenge.

This piece itself was a momentary inspiration... after seeing a painting in a gallery, a landscape with a long horizontal orientation, I all of a sudden realized I didn't need to stay in the square or moderate rectangle format that I'd been using. And then I realized I really wanted a long format painting for my gallery wall and that would fix the proportion problems I was having. And then I realized I had a bunch of scrap wood in my garage.
And then this was the piece that I found and I realized I loved the detail of having the red painted cut end and could allow that to inspire me. And I decided I wanted the grain to show through, so I put the gesso away before I could cover the ground.
Gallery Wall in the works

And after painting it, I sanded it and then put the piece up on the wall (this is my new cat, we think her name is Fanny Moon) and decided I didn't like the way the knot showed through the paint-- it just looked like a splotch, so I added the cloud. And Ivy told me to name it "Cloudie" so I named it "Cloud Traveling."
By the way. Here's Ivy. She is sad because she took Gabriel to school this morning and is having her Monday morning blues missing her brother.

So that's my creative process on this piece. But you know, you kind of have been in on a lot of my whole creative process... since every piece we do is also informed by everything we've done before, all the things we've seen before, everything we've learned before and, you know, our entire lives.

So for the last 100 days, I've been sharing the chaotic, confused, this and that direction of my creating. Some good, some not so good, some finished, some just an amorphic blob of intention.

The most important thing about being creative, about being an artist, I believe, is to just keep going. Whatever it is, writing, painting, dancing, singing, acting, playing music, cooking, sewing, whatever medium... just keep going. Explore, learn, practice, create.

If you've ever seen Finding Nemo, Dory said it best...

"Just keep swimming."