Puttering around the studio
This has happened before.
I have a big, several-month expanse of time in the studio ahead of me. Time to buckle down, get productive, take my art seriously. I’ve been playing around long enough; it’s time to make a Series Of Work. Time to paint a bunch of big canvases, sticking to a similar subject, or a similar theme, or hell even similar colors might do it. All real artists work in series. Time for you to start.
Like a stubborn child I resist. I start lots of different unrelated canvases, different sizes, colors, feelings. I re-work a small self-portrait, paint some dark red cherries, and start four different-sized canvases with scenes from unrelated places. Or I don’t paint at all. But you need a series. How are you supposed to be taken seriously as an artist if you don’t produce many paintings that look eerily similar to each other?
Time and again, pressuring myself to produce a series gets me nowhere. I can’t decide if this is because A) I am being too easy on myself, undisciplined, letting my fear of failure stop me from doing what I should be, or B) I am being too hard on myself, and the way I work now is the way I work best, and it’s the way I should continue to work.
The only thing I have figured out is that this approach isn’t going to start working for me any time soon. So what’s the alternative? Spend the summer painting any and every idea that catches my fancy? Try it all and see what I end up with? I can’t decide if that’s a good idea or not.
But it sure sounds fun.
—-
PS – My first-ever newsletter is slated to be sent out next week. Sign up for my mailing list now to make sure you receive it. It’s sure to become a collector’s item. 
