thank you for all of your ideas & support on organization and perfectionism. it has helped me gain some clarity and feel in good company. i’m going to continue blathering on about my current thoughts, realizing this is just where i am at right now, so bare with me please:) OK, so that Quaker song “make new friends, but keep the old… (see header)” is resonating with me in my thinking about art and life symbolically speaking. my current dilemma is deciding: an illustration path versus a painting path. it gets me in a head loop connected to money, which is connected to most things, but there is no garauntee that either path pans out. so in the end… i want to continue to embrace the good of both and keep exploring and building up my skills. phew!
when i decided i wanted to go back to school for illustration my biggest dream was to publish a children’s book and to have a rep like lilla rogers and was/am attracted to that kind of pretty & feminine “naive style” art. while at school, i got discouraged because my peers are into a different genre… comic books, realistic, andrew wyeth type of art and focused on editorial instead of the children’s book & the lifestyle market i was aiming towards. anywho, i felt like people didn’t/don’t relate to my work in the illo dept at school (that is why this blog has been such a blessing to get feedback from people outside of school!) additionally my illustrations sometimes don’t COMMUNICATE very clearly, and for some reason i like that, but it is defeating the point of “illustrating”. i like more lyrical approaches to illustration.
on the flip side the painting department feels more like home, but shuns all things illustrative or trendy. and let’s face it, i am attracted to both! i do think by switching my major to painting i will be able to explore my own voice more and someday apply that more fully to both illustration and painting. what trips me up is when i think about making my new website and already feeling constrained by showing both illustration and painting together, when approaching a gallery. i can always develop a psuedonym in the future because let’s face it the galleries i’m approaching don’t care. i realize in my mind i put the cart before the horse, but when you are in school they are preparing you for the Whitney, so they make it seem like it’s a big deal about being associated with illustration as a painter. the next question is about pursuing an MFA in painting, still connected to $… i would so love to teach college students painting someday, but that seems like a competetive field and a long way away.
after all this writing i’m realizing: I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT AS IT PERTAINS TO ART, i can break those boundaries and don’t need to feel so head trippy. i still would love to publish a children’s book and be associated with art lila rogers style, and i want to have art shows as a painter.
part of what is bringing this to the surface is that Hugh and i met with our friend Kevin on tuesday to talk about investing (well, he educated us on this) and had us list our financial goals/dreams for the next 5 years, 10 years, 15 and so on…. it was pretty funny in that we felt we were the wrong people to be talking to (2 artists who have no savings) and sobering and made my palms sweat a bit, but in the end made us feel more hardcore about the present, as related to our dreams. so i’m trying to clarify my dreams a bit… where is that magic 8 ball?! the root of all of this may be are that there are so many choices in life and that we lead really “priveleged lives” (i realize this word is loaded) in having so many amazing choices.