Old Feelings, New Direction

I thought I'd write about today before it got away; like Monday,  Tuesday, Wednesday...

I was still tired from yesterday, when I painted with my Friday Painting group. 

As I was waiting for something to finish cooking, I sat down in the library (right by the kitchen) and worked some on the jigsaw puzzle, utterly depressed.  My husband came upstairs to get a snack and I was able to talk through all the negativity I was feeling about my art.
 
I have been trying to oil paint for almost a year now and I'm not really getting that much better.  I know lots of information and rules in my head about how to make the canvas look like whatever I'm painting, but something's not right.

The Friday oil painting class I am taking currently is really good for me.  Perhaps more for exposing myself to new people as to new painting techniques.  Yesterday  I began to feel more part of the group and began to see people in new ways.

However, my painting still didn't measure up to the standards I have set for myself.  And when some of the other group members' paintings looked fantastic, I got really depressed.  They just do this on Fridays.  I paint EVERY DAY.  Something is just not fair about all this!

And today I was working on a good pity party about it all, too.  I am beginning to wonder if plein air painting is just not my thing.   When I look at my plein air paintings, I don't like what I see, even if the form is rendered correctly.  I am looking at a journal of my feelings, and they are painful!   I have also discovered  I am more nervous knowing a teacher will come around and "correct" what I am doing wrong.  It rather locks me up artistically.

I do wonder if God is encouraging me to try another form of  painting.  I like still life painting, and I have some completed ones that I really like.  It's done in a safe place - in my studio. And there is no one around to "correct" me.

Today when Pinkberry and I were touring the Art Institute, I LOVED the student work around the color wheel.  There was a flower made with about 10-12 different gum packages used as petals, each representing a different color on the color wheel.

They also had a series of the same photo of a girls face done in 12 pure colors lined up in spectrum order.  My creative juices started going!  There were also a few modern/abstract paintings I really liked - they had lots of texture and color.

Makes me want to get out my acrylics and mediums and start getting it on canvas!  I have wanted to try taking an outdoor photo and painting the shapes and then totally abstracting them.  I think that would be more my style of painting.  It would be more fun and less fussy than this serious oil stuff.

I think I am finding a new direction.

(originally posted April 25, 2009 on another site)