I have been super busy. Interestingly, it’s easy to work hard when you love what you’re doing and all you get is positive feedback and nobody yet giving your work a one-star review, publicly wishing that they could burn it. However, I am also learning just how frustrating art could be. So frustrating, in fact, that I wanted to throw my last painting into the garbage bin:
Yep, this one almost did not happen, because at some point I’d decided that I just can’t. Freaking. Blend. Acrylics:
It was late at night. Josh went to bed, after trying to cajole me for an hour to give it a rest, which is not something I do often. I finally gave up and decided that this one was not to be. Some famous painter said that he was happy if one out of ten paintings was good, so the next morning I started playing with it. Then an amazing thing happened – because I had already written this particular piece of canvas off, I was no longer scared to try bold colors and fearless highlights. And somehow, (I am once again completely puzzled at how this happened), I made a painting at which I just. Can’t. Stop. Staring.
This is my number four and the first one that has a name. Persistence. Because she taught me not to stop and now that I know, I will continue no matter how ugly the progress stages get. I didn’t even take the most shocking one, where I scraped back her cheeks. Here are the ones I did take:
Thank you Persistence. I won’t forget.
Ana Spoke, author 