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This Period of Learning To Paint

For the past several months I have been on a learning journey with watercolor and gouache. I never anticipated working with a paint brush in hand but here I am being thoroughly challenged by it and waking up each day wanting to do more of it. I have absolutely loved this period of learning to paint, of feeling new frustration and new challenges and of occasionally rising to meet them. Painting lets me create in a more fluid and flexible manner than needle felting. While rush and hurry are not my goals, seeing notable progress on a piece is certainly satisfying.

Watercolor on paper 5 x 7″

For the last couple years I have been wishing away the work load of looking after the real sheep and the real dogs in order to sit still and create artwork of them. Yet doing all the leg work a farm requires and being immersed in daily experiences with the animals fuels the desire to create as much artwork of these subjects as can be fit into the remainder of life. The worry of wasting time and not being able to create fast enough is real and distinct.

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Does Your Why Hold Strong?

At an adjudicated art show I attended a few years back the adjudicator offered a piece of advice that stuck with me – good art comes about from knowing your why; I would add that so does good farming. Why you create the particular work you create, why you gravitate to those subjects or that process. Are your intangible reasons powerful enough to see you through the lack of reward? Are they powerful enough to show up in your work? If no one witnesses your creations or your process does your why still hold strong?

If an artist knows their why they will always figure out the how. As long as our why’s are important to us there is importance in honouring them, there is importance in continuing even when the results we want from life are not self-evident. Upon hearing it this advice fell into place for me just as the three chosen words Wool, Stone & Prairie did years ago. I remember that the advice gave me great hope; it gave me hope because I knew my why. And today my why is still holding strong – there is that at least. Even with a diminished flock of sheep and fewer dogs, and the occasional slow down of creativity while I fumble with learning new things, my why holds.

I did this drawing awhile back and then ruined it when trying to mount it to a wood panel. Your why also has to carry you through the mistakes, the errors and the losses. It has to be your reason to show up and create when, creatively speaking, nothing seems to be flowing or going your way.

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Drought, Resilience and Art

When tagging and sorting market lambs this fall I was pleasantly surprised at their weights. A look back at a few photographs from the summer season and the surprise seems unfounded. So does the dry conditions of the prairie apparently. All I took note of this past summer was the lack of water and the abundance of grasshoppers. I missed what the prairie was doing, how much it was continuing to grow, regardless of the hardship it is under. I have been going on at length about the dry conditions here and yet even with drought and grasshoppers the photos show an abundance of quality food that any sheep would be eager to dive into.

summer grazing sheep

There is a resiliency in the land that makes my heart sing to see it, the weights of those market lambs are all nature’s doing.

This makes me pause to consider what I have been missing in my pursuit of being artist. At first glance into my studio what I take note of is the growing pile of abandoned efforts, ruined attempts, and false starts. Some days it’s a struggle to even go into the space and try again. I don’t even see the successes of the summer. I forget that while I am struggling with a new medium pieces are still selling. I forget that, as long as I show up and put in effort, what will emerge is a skill set I did not have before. What will emerge is artwork that is my own style and therefore re-energizes me. I feel as though I am in an artistic drought, meanwhile my artistic resiliency is being built, the seeds still being planted for when that hint of rainfall finally does arrive.

collection of watercolor paintings in progress

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