Monday, May 5, 2008

Tabula Rasa


Painting should not be a career choice for the faint of heart. Faced with the prospect of paying the bills with art sales, an artist could be forgiven the occasional nagging anxiety; questions that refuse to go away. Where is the market for figurative abstraction? Should I get another part time job? In fact, it's been said that an artist’s success, depends, in part, on the ability to deal with such dilemmas. Acknowledge their presence, but never allow them into the studio.

I know from experience that it is much more than this. There are times when every brush stroke, or every color selection, is proceeded by an interior chorus of nay-sayers, all questioning my ability to make art. I believe I am not alone in this respect, and one definition of both courage and desperation might be ignoring those noisy critics - at least until one more painting gets done.

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