Little Voice

I am downstairs painting today. Just diving in and seeing what happens. Trying to remember that I don't have to have a final product. Trying to ignore the little voice that pops up from time to time, asking me what I am doing, why I am spending my time on something that might never make it out of the room, questioning my work methods. It is a hard practice to just keep going and not listen to the questions.

I realize that I live so much of my life wanting something I don't have, waiting to start things when the "time is right", planning for a future that is totally constructed in my head. I am such a thinker and dreamer, not as practiced in the art of doing. I know that I do this with my creativity. I dream up projects in my head, and that is where they stay, as elusive goals that are not quite fully mine because I don't grab them and do. I just finished reading Women, Food, and God and The Artist in the Office, both quite different books, both full of little nuggets. But one idea they both touched on was to start where you are, to be with yourself as you are and not procrastinate, whether through eating, as in the former book, or through other methods of procrastination, as in the later read.

It is amazing, when the little voice is mute, how delightful the painting process is. The act of mark-making and seeing a composition come together before your eyes, through your hands work. How transformative just an hour can be to the psyche, how you feel a shift in connection to your art and yourself as an artist.

This is the start.