While I was shoveling snow, I wanted to be planting spring flowers. While I was trying to decide between the black turtleneck or the white, I wanted to be selecting between short sleeves or sleeveless tops. When I was making another crockpot of soup, I wanted to be making some adventurous flavors of ice cream. Somewhere along the line I romanticized the coming Spring and neglected to consider how many leaves had collected in the garden, how well I managed to stack the lawn furniture in the shed before winter set in, and how fast weeds sprout once the temperature begins to rise.
Reality set in this weekend when I racked and collected more leaves than I think I have trees, managed to unearth the lawn furniture without having the whole works collapse on top of me, and pulled some of the more obnoxious weeds before calling it a day….I could have kept going, but on gorgeous days like this I also enjoy being in the studio.
I opened all of the windows to let the fresh air and natural light flood the space, cranked up the smart speaker, and went to work. The new painting I’ve been telling you about is coming along – I’ve started filling in the background and fine tuning some of the details. This stage of a painting takes the most time partly because I let my mind’s eye rest for a few days between sessions (as opposed to working every day for several days at a time on a single piece) and partly because I become hyper critical and need a rest. But that’s not to say that I’ve been idle. I’ve resumed work on another painting of a solitary figure and have put a third painting that needs some attention on another easel – at the moment, the figure has no head (she had a head, but I decided I didn’t like it…I think I’ve created and removed her head three times so far…hyper critical? Who me?)