Tag: Challenges

Putting it out there… That is what an artist does.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.
                                             ~ Havelock Ellis

Putting it out there… That is what an artist does. I am realizing that more and more, I am writing my autobiography. An artist does put it all out there.

Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) has been taking more of my time lately. I just finished the Northern Yearly Meeting eNews for July. For the past few years, I edited and produced the eNews for the yearly meeting.

For most of my writing now, I am using Grammarly. Yes, it is AI, and since I am dyslexic, it is very helpful. However, there are still mistakes, mostly because of reading errors. I get impatient and skim. I found that it is not good for proofreading. I am considering writing more about my life, but I don’t know how open I want to be. 

Derwent Inktense pencils and blocks have captured my attention as a new medium, and I am playing with them in combination with other materials that I am comfortable using. Applying the Inktense color with a brush was a concern because it has been quite a while since I last used watercolor or a brush. After playing with them, have a handle on the ink, but not a tight grip. : ) My pen work over the last couple of years has been beneficial.

I think of my friends Joe Sinness and Andrea Carlson, artists who are adept with wet media and can create sharp lines and crisp edges. 

I am drawing more and finding it rewarding—it allows me to center, and it is a meditative practice for me. Over the last few months, I have created three or four new pieces.

Below is a fun and quirky piece I created by playing and experimenting with Derwent Inktense pencils and my pens.

IMG_4582-Color Study 06202024
IMG_4582-Color Study 06202024

How do I use Social Media?

Does the word how also ask the question why?

How do I use social media? The short answer is not well if I am serious about branding and marketing myself, but my primary purpose is to document my work and share with others what interests me.
As an artist, it is a great way to share my work, get feedback, and comment on others’ work.
I like to document my work on ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com on my blog. It is incredible how long I have been posting there. A few years ago, Blue Host took my site down, and I had to move it to WordPress.com. So, some of the pictures are still missing, but it is becoming whole again.
I have two pages called Art Changes Lives on Facebook and LinkedIn. On those two pages, I share my artwork and other artists’ work or shows. This posting will be found on those two sites and on Tumblr.
I tend to use my Facebook account for more personal postings, such as saying hi to friends or sending birthday wishes. I also post some about my art interests and personal connections, such as birthdays and other messages.

Nice to have an opportunity to share why and how I use social media.

Sharing Some Recent Work

Art is the expression of those beauties and emotions that stir the human soul. ~ Howard Pyle

A drawing that I call Life Map - 042023. Drawn with Sakura Pigma Micron pens. Abstract Surrealism
Life Map – 042023, Pen and Ink – 9″ x 6″

 

The Small Potato Manifesto—May not Read but I Identify

Book cover, for a book titled Creative Not Famous, The Small Potato Manifesto
Potato Manifesto, Author Ayun Halliday

I’ve got this theory that the giant majority—like 99.9% of all humans toiling creatively—are small potatoes. We’ll never be rich. We’ll never be famous … nowhere near as famous as we should be. Yet, we struggle on, undeterred that most of the world considers us to be small potatoes … if they consider us at all.
       ~ Ayun Halliday’s, Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto

Keep on Truckin' an image inspired bya song by The Temptations 1973
Keep on Truckin’. It’s an image inspired by a song with the same title.

I guess we “Keep On Truckin’.”

 

 

Dyslexia is not a disability – it’s a gift.

From the series Words I Cannot Spell by Bill Hendricks. A photographic image of scattered and layered letterforms exploring dyslexia, language, and visual perception.

From the suite of images by Bill Hendricks, Words That I Cannot Spell.

Dyslexia is not a disability – it’s a gift. It means that I, and many other dyslexic thinkers can portray the world through images because we think in images. I can build worlds, freeze the frame, walk around and touch. I can read people’s faces, drawings, buildings, landscapes and all things in the visual world more quickly than many of my non-dyslexic friends. I paint with words; they are my colours.

~ Sally Gardner (Davis Dyslexia Association International)

Growing up, I had no idea why I had such a hard time reading and comprehending what I read. In my day, elementary school classes divided readers into groups: good, so-so, and poor. I always wanted to be in the good readers group, but I consistently found myself in the poor group with another student assigned as our tutor. I never understood why reading the things I wanted to read felt so difficult.

It was not until I joined the USAF that I discovered I was dyslexic. Reading is still a struggle, but like Sally Gardner, I believe dyslexia also allows many of us to experience the world differently. Personally, I think dyslexia contributed to my ability to express myself through art and other creative problem-solving endeavors.

I included Sally Gardner’s poem, Disobeys Me, with my suite of images titled Words That I Cannot Spell, because it speaks to an experience many people with dyslexia understand deeply.

I also want to thank Hunt and Gather Antiques for allowing me to photograph the incredible collection of letters in their backlot.

SLEA Labyrinth –> Procrastination

Why am I procrastinating?

“We don’t abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them.” — Epictetus (the Daily Stoic)

SLEA Labyrinth as of 11-13-23, created by Bill Hendricks / Tap Quentin for Second Life Endowment for the Arts Grant.
Choices, Investigation, and Perfectionism

I am currently working on completing this project for my grant, but confronting self-doubt. The self-doubt I find is almost as hard to overcome as the desire for perfection and overthinking.