Yesterday, I spent some time in my studio reorganizing stuff and taking stock. I wanted a fresh start for the new year, and that included freeing up some space. During this process, I made some discoveries that will hopefully impact the direction I take in 2014.
Things had become very cluttered during the holidays--and my studio is a relatively small space--since I had spent about three weeks prior to Thanksgiving painting rice papers for Christmas ornaments and beginning to make those ornaments. So half-finished ornaments were part of that clutter. I soon began to realize that the abandoned, half-completed ornaments were perhaps emblematic of one of my larger issues with how I produce my art.
Why, I asked myself, had I failed to complete even one ornament, in spite of the fact that I had created some stunning hand-painted papers? Rationalizing, I suppose, I chalked it up to my fairly recent general lack of enthusiasm for the winter holidays. I caught myself wondering how this dearth of personal interest and investment in the holidays had come about. While my immediate family of Tom and Flynn were with me, of course, I realized that I was really missing my sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews. After all, so many good memories of the holidays had been built on spending time with them--and most of these memories were associated with my sister Kelli and how, after my parents' deaths, her home had become the locus of all good celebrations. With her passing two years ago, there was no longer a real gathering place for the family in December. Sadness was my dominant emotion as we made our way through the end of the year.
As I reflected on this situation while packing up and stowing the papers and "semi-ornaments" for a future holiday season, I was faced with the reality of dozens of half-finished paintings that had been buried for weeks under the ornament paraphernalia. Even more beginnings were stacked on the floor near my paper rack. There I was, ready to start painting a-fresh for 2014, yet I stood face-to-face with evidence of at least two years' worth of fresh starts that amounted, essentially, to nothing.
Feelings of failure and self-loathing washed over me as I wrestled with the implications of my reality: why was I experiencing so much difficulty finishing things? What phobia was operative here? Was there a name for this fear of finishing?
It is true that I've always been, more or less, a procrastinator; but as long as I had a deadline of some sort, I always managed to successfully complete projects--sometimes brilliantly. Was a lack of non-self-imposed deadlines wreaking havoc on me? Would I ever be able to impose effective deadlines on myself? How could I begin to correct this failing?
It was a serendipitous sequence of actions that has maybe put me on the road to finishing again.
As I was reconsidering all these great starts of mine, trying to bring some organization to bear upon the task, I made a discovery. Taken together, many of these beginnings seemed to me, well, related--in the colors, style, and recourse to symbolism that seemed to be emerging.
In short, I see now that I was unconsciously working on a series, i.e., a series was developing, without my conscious brain even realizing it. I have named this series "My Africa." I have never been to Africa, although I've longed for ages to go there. Such warm music, and such amazing African people I've known (most from West Africa)!...all of which/whom have stirred my heart and my imagination. I have always (not always consciously) tried to envision this continent, not in its darker elements, but in the warmth and sunshine and technicolor from my (relatively limited) experiences that were filling my psyche. Hence, I suspect, "My Africa"--one born out of pure visual / audio imagining.
Things had become very cluttered during the holidays--and my studio is a relatively small space--since I had spent about three weeks prior to Thanksgiving painting rice papers for Christmas ornaments and beginning to make those ornaments. So half-finished ornaments were part of that clutter. I soon began to realize that the abandoned, half-completed ornaments were perhaps emblematic of one of my larger issues with how I produce my art.
Why, I asked myself, had I failed to complete even one ornament, in spite of the fact that I had created some stunning hand-painted papers? Rationalizing, I suppose, I chalked it up to my fairly recent general lack of enthusiasm for the winter holidays. I caught myself wondering how this dearth of personal interest and investment in the holidays had come about. While my immediate family of Tom and Flynn were with me, of course, I realized that I was really missing my sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews. After all, so many good memories of the holidays had been built on spending time with them--and most of these memories were associated with my sister Kelli and how, after my parents' deaths, her home had become the locus of all good celebrations. With her passing two years ago, there was no longer a real gathering place for the family in December. Sadness was my dominant emotion as we made our way through the end of the year.
As I reflected on this situation while packing up and stowing the papers and "semi-ornaments" for a future holiday season, I was faced with the reality of dozens of half-finished paintings that had been buried for weeks under the ornament paraphernalia. Even more beginnings were stacked on the floor near my paper rack. There I was, ready to start painting a-fresh for 2014, yet I stood face-to-face with evidence of at least two years' worth of fresh starts that amounted, essentially, to nothing.
Feelings of failure and self-loathing washed over me as I wrestled with the implications of my reality: why was I experiencing so much difficulty finishing things? What phobia was operative here? Was there a name for this fear of finishing?
It is true that I've always been, more or less, a procrastinator; but as long as I had a deadline of some sort, I always managed to successfully complete projects--sometimes brilliantly. Was a lack of non-self-imposed deadlines wreaking havoc on me? Would I ever be able to impose effective deadlines on myself? How could I begin to correct this failing?
It was a serendipitous sequence of actions that has maybe put me on the road to finishing again.
As I was reconsidering all these great starts of mine, trying to bring some organization to bear upon the task, I made a discovery. Taken together, many of these beginnings seemed to me, well, related--in the colors, style, and recourse to symbolism that seemed to be emerging.
In short, I see now that I was unconsciously working on a series, i.e., a series was developing, without my conscious brain even realizing it. I have named this series "My Africa." I have never been to Africa, although I've longed for ages to go there. Such warm music, and such amazing African people I've known (most from West Africa)!...all of which/whom have stirred my heart and my imagination. I have always (not always consciously) tried to envision this continent, not in its darker elements, but in the warmth and sunshine and technicolor from my (relatively limited) experiences that were filling my psyche. Hence, I suspect, "My Africa"--one born out of pure visual / audio imagining.
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