We build our own mouse traps. They take us down those endless paths that lead to nowhere. They give us our excuses to rationalize our failure.
Knowing the tricks, knowing the ground rules, playing fair; they’re nobodies’ excuses but our own. Understanding what is preventing you from reaching your goal, that golden apple and admitting it, is the first step towards success.
Miniature Pastel on panel
Step one: recognizing that you hold the key to either your failure or success. Is it writing that first short story? It begins with the first word. Visual art begins with the first stroke. Nothing will emerge without making a move. Otherwise, it stays bottled up in your mind and without releasing it causes you to only see failure.
So where do we go from here? Well, what is causing you to come to these pages? Can it be just that vague feeling that there is more to you than what meets the eye and you need to find a way to express it? You know it’s in there. You can feel it moving around in your mind when your imagination is tickled. You recognize a small pang of what? Jealousy, perhaps when experience something that speaks to that passion.
We are on a journey to explore the ways to keep that stream of creativity stocked with what is necessary to keep us well fed. We’ll be looking at methods to open the floodgates to the potential that lies within our reach. We are all creative, even in the darkest time, we already have the tools. We simply have to unearth and discover how to employ them.
Setting grief aside, not dismissing it but honoring it in its own place, opens a door to let the light in. Freeing your mind from the stress of financial difficulties will allow you to walk more confidently unrestricted by narrow vision perhaps taking you in a new career direction. And unless you are faithful to yourself first the most intimate relationships around you will be malnourished.
Discipline is key, so we need to take one step at a time, affirmative action; taking control. All those that tap into their potential are those that claimed responsibility for their lives.
Transfer print with mixed water media
In 1987, somewhere in the middle after being released from college with a degree in painting and awaiting a world that had not quite yet embraced my work, I enrolled in a class called Art Therapy and Human Development. As it turned out it became my therapy and my development. To this day I believe my art has always been a form of self-therapy.
Monotype
I started to keep travel journals when I enrolled for a summer course titled Greek Art and History at The School of Visual Arts. It took us throughout the Peloponnesus to witness the land and culture first hand. The single most important requirement was a journal to keep notes from the many lectures as well as record impressions and experiences we encountered. I hadn't understood the true value of keeping such a journal or the breadth of information it could hold until I returned home. Each page revealed a slice of my journey in full detail. It brought back to me the richness of texture, taste, and smell. It filled in the gaps that my photographs created. With each trip I made that took me anywhere beyond my usual surroundings, either to a neighboring city or to a foreign country, I brought a journal. And it progressed to contain Polaroid’s, quick sketches in the margins, drawings, paintings, scraps of ticket stubs, restaurant receipts, anything that revealed the sense of place.
An essential part of my journals comes by way of writing. It is necessary for me to think on the page. It helps me to keep track of materials and methods I've tried and their result. It allows me to focus. And although I'm often tempted, I try to restrict my writing to steer clear of griping about circumstances unrelated to my creative endeavors. What inspires you? What fleeting thoughts, and they are all fleeting unless you write them down, cross your mind each day? Writing them down, see them take root and grow.
-Laura
