The creative muse has been absent from my studio for quite some time now. People ask me all of the time, “How do you stay motivated?”. I reply about creativity being a practice, about having “transition” things to do in the studio that will lead to other creative ventures, etc. But for the past few months NOTHING was working for me! Finally, a good friend said “Arriving is half the battle”. And so, I went to my studio and just sat. Nothing. No urge to look at my “stuff”. No urge to straighten, no energy at all. Now, some of this is physical because I have been dealing with a B-12 deficiency and lots of low energy days. But still, I always want to make art!?!? I was beginning to feel more than a little panic! After 2 days of just sitting, I started reading some poetry. The book “Prayers of Comfort and Hope” has great poems in it if you need comfort and motivation! And that got me going a bit. I started out by just painting some pieces of textured stuff that was left from class demos. I still didn’t feel ready to tackle a plain canvas or sheet of paper. After painting scraps for a day, I started browsing around for something else that needed attention. I found a couple of canvasses that were also class demos and needed finishing. I began “poking” at them with the paint brush and finally, finally, I WAS PAINTING!!! I did 3 canvasses and the start of a 4th one. I am picturing here one that I like the way that it turned out. I don’t usually use a lot of imagery in my work. It is a LOT of work to integrate imagery in with your painting and have it have a cohesive and unified look. I think I actually made it work rather well in this collage. It is hard to tell where the figure ends and the painting begins. I will post some of the other things that I accomplished last week in the next couple of days.

Jacqueline Sullivan is a teacher and mixed-media artist, with experience in graphic design, advertising and publications.
Be with those who help your being.
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