Spring

I have a habit of counting the days 'til spring. I know, in a way this is kind of weird because I ignore the beauty of the days that I am in the midst of. I am always looking forward, instead of enjoying the present moment. I just love spring. It is wonderful watching the trees come into bloom and watching everything turn green and pink and white. The many shades of green are so beautiful to look at. Fall has its own beauty, the colors of the leaves are so brilliant. But these soon drop off and leave barren tree limbs. And then cold weather sets in and for someone prone to melancholy, the difficult waiting period 'til spring arrives. One would think I would find something to do that helps minimize the effects of the dark winter months. So far I haven't. Though there are times when the chilly weather really is special. There is nothing quite so lovely as a cardinal streaking across a field of snow on a brilliant sunny day. I saw this years ago and I have never forgotten it. I suppose there is a way to get through winter without getting depressed. Perhaps the secret is to fill your days with activity. To find something that requires you to get outdoors. I am fortunate in that I live close to parks and there are many forms of wildlife there. So many varieties of birds and other animals like deer and beaver and foxes and opossums. There are so many forms of life that one can run into them without fail. A trip outdoors is all that is required. Something to be said for that.

Check in

Just haven't had much opportunity to write lately, kind of a low period. I have not been creating much either. I took two works down to the place where I sell my work, this has been the extent of my output for the last several months. My depression keeps me from really creating as much as I like and it frustrates me. I wonder how a professional artist does it. I do have an idea for a still-life and I have done a couple of small watercolor sketches which are pleasing. I just received the most recent "Artist's " magazine and there was a wonderful article about scratchboard in it. This is something that Iwould love to try and I would like to visit an art supply and see what I can find that relates to it. My community is not a great place to find art supplies. There is a Michael's and an A.C. Moore, but they probably don't carry what I am looking for. I will have to travel outside my community to find what I am looking for.

Wrestling With Old Demons

An old character defect of mine is allowing myself to get too isolated. Spending too much time alone is old comfortable behavior. There is an old proverb that goes : In order to be a friend one must be friendly. I guess that maybe it begins with picking up the 1000 lb. phone and calling someone. There are people online to talk to, but that means I can get out of an intimate conversation and opening up to someone. Something that I like to avoid. I can talk to my better half and we can have a nice conversation, but sometimes it is good to touch base with one of the guys. Are all guys like this? Getting older can be part of the problem. It is easy to just kick back on the couch and watch tv. No commitments to get together, no talking about more than the everyday stuff. When you get older some things just don't seem as important. Sometimes it is just too easy to avoid talking guy stuff.
I just bought a bike and I am anxious about getting on it. I need to get some exercise and I love to ride. My last bike I dislocated my kneecap when I was getting off it. I ended up in the E.R. in a lot of pain. Since then, every time I get on the bike there is a little part of me that remembers that injury. I have been on the bike a lot of times since that injury, but there is still the nagging fear that it will happen again. I think that I just need to warm up a little before getting on the bike. The last injury happened because I hadn't ridden for awhile and I was out of shape. Sort of like now. I guess I need to learn from that last injury.
Depression is something that I know well. More than I care to admit. It is a comfortable old friend that fits me like a glove. Kind of like the isolation I wrote about, except moreso. Depression is where you can't bring yourself to leave the house. Where everyday is just like the day before. Depression is my disability. My depression keeps me from moving ahead with my life. One gets used to staying at home and vegetating. Grocery shopping is the only time one leaves for the most part. Maybe a thirty minute outing to the library to get more books. Reading memoirs is a way to see how others are leading their lives. Tiring routine.

New Ideas

Sometimes it is so very hard to come up with new ideas. Nothing motivates me. At times it can get frustrating. I was reading a book about cartooning and the author made the comment that seventy percent of one's time is spent coming up with ideas. That is a lot of time. I am not a cartoonist but I spend a lot of my time generating ideas for projects. It didn't occur to me that idle-time is productive time with the right frame-of-mind.
Sometimes people say dreams are a source of inspiration. But I'm unsure. I have always felt that dreams might be a source of inspiration with the right motivation and discipline. I have heard that dreams can be significant sources of direction. Yet I have never found myself actually tapping into a dream for any type of guidance. The inventor of the sewing machine had a dream tell him how the design of the needle was to be constructed. Another person had the shape of a molecule come to him in a dream. The Bible is full of examples of people who used dreams as a way of understanding how to proceed. Joseph, the husband of Mary, was directed as to where he was to go when presented with conflicting ideas. I wonder if there might be truth to these stories. Or are they just stories?

Gratitude

Doing a gratitude list on a daily basis to combat depression is a difficult proposition. I have battled depression for the last fifteen years or so and this makes gratitude a demanding pursuit. I heard that some people of the Jewish faith are asked to do a list of 100 things to be grateful for every day. Imagine. Sometimes I can do it. Sometimes it is easier than others. Today I struggled to find 10 or so things that I consider a blessing. Today was my grandson's seventh birthday. I had to drive twenty miles to my daughter's home and the traffic for a Friday afternoon was minimal. There were showers, but they waited 'til I was at my daughter's home. My grandson was well-behaved for the most part and I only said something to correct him one time. He ignored me. I think I must have been the same way when I was seven so it wasn't a big deal. Still, it did irritate me a bit.
Miracles. I have sometimes thought that it is an amazing thing to be here. Life is amazing. I find myself making an effort to thank God for each new day. I am fifty-six years old and it is becoming clear to me that I cannot take anything for granted anymore. I have lost a lot of people to death the last few years and a lot of them were my age. Cancer took a few of them. Others just died for no particular good reason. So being alive is a big deal. It is a miracle. I don't know where I came from and most of the time I am not sure where I am going. I believe in God, but I think that God allows me a lot of free-rein. He doesn't say that you must do this or that to be on my good side. He allows me to get off-course before he does anything. I am diabetic. I gained a lot of weight and had a pretty crappy diet. So I got diabetes. I struggle with the reality that I must eat a certain way and that I must exercise. I don't do it so there will come a time where God is going to rein me in and it will not be in a gentle way. This is my belief system. If I get too far out there, there will be consequences. God is gentle with me and my behavior shows it. Still, like my seven-year-old grandson, I sometimes want to push the envelope.

A Miracle

One of the things that captures my attention lately has been the idea that we are all miracles. Picasso said that it is a miracle we don't dissolve in our bathwater. I read somewhere that as part of a daily spiritual regimen we are to focus on all the ways we are blessed. Do a gratitude list of 100 things every day. Sounds hard until one tries it. What is hard though is to practice it consistently. I have not been able to do it for more than a couple days. Still, it can be done. Divine intervention in day-to-day affairs is hard to see. At times we just miss the obvious because we are too interested in getting from point a to point b. Today I had to run to the doctor to pick up a prescription. I had to stop at the store on the way home and I was just interested in getting home. One thing I did not notice until today was the amount of trees along the route to the doctor. There was one section that looked like it was a forest and I had not noticed it until today. It is so easy to miss beauty when focused on getting things accomplished. A couple of days ago I walked my dog in a local park. We stopped for a moment and sat down in the grass. I noticed a firefly on one of the blades of grass. Several inches away was a oddly colored ladybug. It is so easy to miss beauty when in a hurry. It is nice when some internal mechanism kicks in and says, slow down. Why is it so hard to see how blessed we are? There is a Native American saying that I like that goes, I am involved in self-pity and all the while I am being pulled across the sky in majestic clouds. ( Paraphrased.) It would be nice if there were a way to open oneself up to that reality.

Filling the Page.

Started reading "The Artists Way" again . Just frustrated with my creative block, Julia Cameron's book has always helped me to get unstuck. A creative block according to a lot of artist's these days does not exist. A dream of mine has been to someday be an artist like many others. But I just don't like to draw or paint. Quite a dilemma. I read "The Artists Way" many years ago when it first came out. Back then I was more creative. There was a lot of energy in my life back then... Now I struggle for ideas. A lot of time I just write. It seems much easier than painting. A favorite artist of mine is Chuck Close. One of the things he says about creative blocks is they are for amateurs, a real painter just gets to work. This makes sense, but I'm still stuck. Writing is just so much more relaxing. Perhaps there is some thing that I am better at than drawing and painting. I used to do little watercolor drawings with inspirational quotes on them. For a long time these were fun to do, but somewhere along the line they turned into a pain. Has anyone found themself in a similar situation-where art turns into a drag? It just seems that there was a time when I loved to create. Then I started thinking. I started thinking about all the artists out there who are better than me. I thought about how my work did not look like other's work. I thought about if it would make money. I thought about how it would look on a wall, and I forgot about how much fun it was to create the work.
The book The Artists Way is about doing writing exercises that are designed to make a person more creative. It works, it really does. Perhaps all the writing gets you to be a writer like Cameron. She is a great writer, no doubt about that. Perhaps if one becomes more creative with writing that is a good thing. Perhaps if we put expectations on what we want to become is asking too much.

Growth

I have noticed that the things that used to be important are not nearly as important as they once were. For some strange reason I find myself getting lots of charity requests. Once I would have discarded all of them. Now I try to help when I can. One of my favorite things are books. I love books, art books in particular. I like to read about illustration and fine art. I probably spend too much on books. More money could go to charities if I gave up a few books. How does one give up that publication and instead give the money to charity? How does one change their priorities when it is clear that a change needs to be made? Time will tell. I am not sure that it will be an easy issue to address. I just bought a book about R.O.Blechman's graphic novels. The book is called "Talking Lines." I tried to find the book at my library but was unsuccessful. So I bought it. I felt a little guilty about my purchase because I also purchased some new music. Two of my favorite things, books and music. It seems to me that we all struggle to make the right choices at times. There have been times in my life when I have needed help. Now there are lots of people in need of help. It is my turn to help. But I still struggle with doing the right thing. I think giving a little bit here and there is nice, but it does not make much difference. Does it?

Just a Note

I haven't written anything in a while. Perhaps not that much to say. Spending a lot of time alone will do that. I have not been creating much, that is unusual, though not totally out of character. Spending too much time alone robs one of ideas. At least it works that way for me. Many of my ideas come from my spiritual roots. And spirituality works best for me in fellowship with others. I have decided that I need to make some changes, my creativity is suffering. I will add more as I decide if I can make the necessary changes.

A Safe Place

Writing is my safe place. Whenever I am hurting I hurry to my journal and begin to unwind. I don't get overly complicated, I just write. Years ago I read the "Artists Way." It was an eye-opening experience. In the book was a way to express yourself and to be an "artist." I had kept a journal of sorts but never really did it in a disciplined way. I never thought of myself as an artist and still have a hard time using that term, but I did like the idea of a disciplined way of expressing myself. I have depression, so perhaps I have a propensity for emotional unraveling. A journal was perfect for the feelings I didn't know what to do with. A place to be safe with all my complicated thoughts and unwieldy feelings.
Trust is a thing I have a tough time with. Perhaps that is why I go to the written word as a way to express myself. It goes back to childhood when things were too complicated to figure out. Today things are much simpler. I still feel as if I am going to meltdown at times, but it doesn't happen. I just feel as if I might.
I don't know why I have always liked the idea of art, the skill that comes from drawing, painting and sculpting. I liked the idea of creating. In a way it was a safe way to be noticed and occasionally admired. Artists were also in my way of seeing things, special. I know when I began to feel this way. It was the first time I saw a comic strip. It was the first time an aunt drew a silly picture. It was the first time a teacher came over and admired what I had done. To me that was a lot of positive things that happened in a less than perfect time. Art was another safe place for me.

Stirring Things Up

Today is a relatively mild, overcast, winter's day. The sky is full of grey clouds and the forecasters are calling for temperatures in the fifties. Counting down, it is now twenty-seven days 'til spring. Winter has flown by this year. There will be more frigid weather, but the end is in sight.

I have been drawing the last couple of days. There has been a resurgence of creativity after looking at the reasons I create. It seems as if there is something to be said for drawing for fun. When I was a kid I copied the work of many cartoonists. This was a long time before I knew what the definition of a copyright was. I still copy. I draw little pictures of Schulz's Peanuts characters and send them to my grandson. This is good fun. My wife loves Snoopy so I always draw a picture of him dancing for her birthday. A long time ago I remember something Emmylou Harris said about interpreting other artists songs. She said that she was an interpreter of others music. I guess that is how I look at art. I know, it might be a stretch, but when we copy are we stealing, or are we learning? I am not sure.

The drawing is of a pair of red sneakers I have. They will probably be worn until they fall off my feet.

Keeping a Blog

As I mentioned yesterday I have mixed feelings about keeping a blog and wonder the reason for doing it. I started keeping it to interest people in my art but I have come to realize that isn't happening as I don't really generate a lot of art lately. Art has been something that I have done as a way to feel better about myself. It paved the way for me to complete my education some time ago. And to meet people who share my interest in art. Art has helped me in many ways over the years, even as a way to combat depression. Many times I have found myself trying to get through rough times by focusing on art. I As I've gone through periods where relationships have ended a sketchbook has been invaluable. I used my sketchbook as a form of therapy. The first time I got into a juried show did more for me than I can say. It was a precious experience that I will never forget. The idea that my art was good enough to hang in a show was such a kick. When I was in college I met an art professor who I continue to call a friend many years later. Art was the bridge to that relationship.
Iwent to art school for a couple of semesters in order to build my skills. I left art school when I realized that my skills were not good enough to compete with the talent around me. Plus I ended up experiencing an illness that required all my energy at the time. Will I ever go back? I might if there came a time when my ego wasn't as fragile as it was during that period. It is funny, it is now many years since I was in school, but some of those old ideas still can bother me at times.

Finding Inspiration

What is the purpose of a blog? Hopefully it is to educate. Perhaps to amuse. And to entertain. I have begun to ask myself why I do this. Why have I created a blog? I hope it is to create interest in my art. This is why I created this blog. To interest people in my art and to get it out there. But the more I look at it the more I realize that my interest is not so much about art, it is about writing. I like to write. I do not paint as much as I see some people doing. I don't produce a painting every day. Not even once a week. So why do I call myself an artist? It seems a little pretentious. I realize that I create art as a way to increase my self-esteem. I like to say I'm an artist. But I am not sure that I am. I see so much art out there. There are thousands of people out there creating works of art everyday. And some of the work is unbelievable. I cannot believe some of the talent out there. It is incredible. My work cannot hold a candle to some of the masterpieces that show up on the internet. How can people do some of this work? And I think that they do something I don't, they work at it everyday. They create, they practice, they learn. I like to write everyday. I journal every single day at least 2-3 pages. And I think that is what artists do, they work, they put in the effort necessary to show improvement. And honestly, I don't do that. Maybe I have to re-evaluate why I do this blog. Because it is not about art as I once told myself it was going to be about.

Flu

I did not do any drawing the last few days. I have the flu. I have not felt like doing anything but sleeping. Today I slept twelve hours. I was surprised that I got nailed, I thought I was immune. Today was the first day I felt somewhat normal, but any stress at all starts this rumble in my lungs. It reminds me that deep inside of me that it still has its grip on me. I suppose I need antibiotics, but I am reluctant to go to the doctor. There are worst things hanging around his office. I am still feeling as if I want to go back to bed. See you in a day or so.