Sari.. ohh I missed seeing your comment somehow. Here you took the time to write and it went unnoticed by me. I’m sorry. Good advice about the sabbatical, it’s always good to pause and reflect.
I think that being an artist is actually all that I am, so I can’t ever say that I’ve mastered it. It would be like saying I have mastered living. Don’t you think that maybe the quest for great art is synonymous with curiosity and that maybe it can’t ever be mastered?
I keep 2 Leonardo da Vinci books on my coffee table to remind me to stretch my mind, to “nag” at me, that art is a tool to breathe by.
I guess I have never really been “motivated” by sales. When I started selling for more and more money I think it scared me. I think I tend to sabotage success a bit. Part of it might be that I had a production pottery studio for 20 years.. 20 years of sitting there like a machine and of course that was never “art”; it was craft; it was “product”. 8 employees and reps in every state making demands. It was a dead zone but it paid the bills and had its own success. I would paint on the weekends when I was not doing more mindless clay efforts. It has only been within the last couple years that I’ve decided to work with clay again doing sculpture. Ohh I’m rambling, but I think that the issue of money and success is a footnote to art/passion.
Because of my production background I have created a lot of art as I’ve felt bad about myself unless I saw a lot of it at the end of each day. Unlike you, not all of it sells…. wow that is so impressive. I have always admired people who seem to be in touch with what is in demand and innately know what is required; the right colors; messages and so on. I’ve been in and out of galleries and all that, been burned many times, sold, not sold, but I have always felt that the struggle was worth it because I was not motivated by sales specifically. I just wanted to get my heart out there. I wanted someone to hear me and come to a meeting place of the soul. It is that need to get that last highlight in the eye of any woman I have painted, making sure she conveys an inner feeling that was unspoken before. Or with sculpture, whether I can hear them or not. I have to hear them because they have something to tell me that is inside of me as well. Those last touches can take days, sometimes weeks and it can feel so painful. Maybe that is it too, my feeling isolated from art. No, that isn’t it.. ohh I don’t know.
My husband’s aunt, seeing my stacks of art, asked if I was going to keep painting and sculpting, that after all didn’t I have enough? I thought to myself at the time, “What a ridiculous thing to say and what silly woman, of course I would continue.” It is not option to discard it, it isn’t like that. It is my breath and that is why it hurts so much to find it missing in me. I can’t breathe. Humm maybe I just can’t let go of some of my work either when I think about it more. I don’t know.
I think that you have taken on the mode of da Vinci and maybe that is where the cure is found. I looked at your website and saw your offshoots into medical thoughts and swans, their nests. Leonardo was curious about everything as you know of course, and art was/is a way to translate that. Curiosity might just be the quest to be on. Again carrying a sketchbook as if it were an appendage.
Considering your website Suri Grove, yes such a great name, I embrace the message you conveyed here so generously and understand it more fully. You are an artist after my own heart. You seek out what is new to you and translate that into something you can share. I try to do the same and love, love what your wrote to me. Onward right?
I don’t want to ignore the fact that this Alyson Standfield’s blog and her efforts here are about selling and being successful as an artist. “I’d Rather Be in the Studio” is more than that though, as I do have it and it is the best book I have come across for that. It is also not unlike “The Artist’s Way”, but speaks directly to me even more than Julia Cameron. It is more direct to my issues as a visual artist, telling me it is OK to successful; to stop sabotaging and making excuses; suggesting unique tools to meet that path with.
Ooof, sorry for the NOVEL!
Onward~ LIFE TAKE ONE

I guess the trick is to not worry about catching up on all the posts since yesterday but to just go through a bunch and post here and there??

When I spend 15 minutes a day on Facebook, I actually feel more connected than when I neglect it for a couple weeks and then spend too much time trying to catch up. The consistency of doing it everyday helps me keep up with what’s going on with people I know and want to know better.

Maybe I’m not “getting” the social network thing. If you spend a very limited amount of time on, say, Facebook, doesn’t it limit the amount you can respond to others which is how you build relationships and networks?