Acceptance

the other day, as I was reflecting in my journal (which I am trying to do pretty regularly again) I realized something about my art and about myself. . . . It's All about acceptance. . . . 

I start a painting with huge grandiose expectations.  I pour myself into it.  I follow my instincts on how to make it the most beautiful piece of art work ever created!  At first I have thoughts of how this painting will promote me.  I tell myself, "I will be famous!!!  They will shout my name from the roof tops because of this piece of art!"  I imagine how Critics will stare in aw at my genius and skill and collectors will clamor to buy it.  Then I'll imagine that from this piece of art work I'll have enough money to live on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean, wear nothing but white linen, and Johnny Depp will come to my parties.----

All because of my genius instincts with shapes and colors.  . . . 

Then I decide it's total shit and I must be special needs.  I have to walk away from it. . .

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When I'm ready to come back, then I fall into the painting.  All other thoughts are gone.  I get close to the painting.  Where my nose almost touches the paint and I watch how the paint smears on the canvas and the color changes everything.  I step back and look at the whole picture.  I try to understand what it is really saying and if it saying my idea or something else.  I try to make it something wonderful with purpose and beauty.  Sometimes I try to make it shocking, sometimes subtle.  Often times I want it to be alive so that it can grow.

Then I decide it's total shit again and I should never paint.  The nerve I have to even hold a paint brush!!!

I always come back to it though.  I aways do. . . Sometimes it's years in between, but I always do.  An unfinished painting is a question that just hounds me until I find an answer and If I don't work at answering it i'm not worth the air i breath.  I will it this way. then I will it that way.  Then I  realize that I can't "Make" the painting anything.  the painting is going to be exactly what it wants to be.  I simply have to help it grow and create it. All of the process is a matter of accepting.  I must accept my skills and my style to let the painting be the magic that it is.  I'm not someone else and I can't create art like someone else.  I am me.  I paint like me.  Sure I can challenge my skills, but to achieve the magic I long for on the canvass I can't try to manipulate it too much.  I just have to let it be.  I have to accept.  when I accept myself everything on the canvass comes alive in just the right way.  My way (like Frank Sinatra).