Just the other day I was talking about being unsure creatively and that hasn't totally gone away but I am more than pleased to report that my confidence is rising. I have a little bounce in my step and it's hard to keep my pencil away from my sketchbook. I want to get these ideas out. I want to keep trying to get to the best of the new ideas while salvaging the smartest of the stuff that's been hanging around. So what changed in a week?
I recently sold 8 paintings. Each person looked carefully and chose paintings which I was pretty fond of myself (such as Pastoral below). They understood key things about the work and made their own meanings and connotations while patiently listening to me and mine.
And the very fact that folks I am not related to happened upon my work and like it so much that they will make an investment in my paintings...well, it's proof.

Maybe I oughta be doing exactly what I am doing even if I'm not always sure what I'm doing. Maybe I don't have to know.
This is not the first time that smart people have bought my art and (cross your fingers) it won't be the last. But because I don't show with a gallery and because I don't invest the kind of time I used to in marketing my work, it's a real thrill to sell work.
When making (sometimes, not always) the doubts set in. When I walk by the paintings, I worry, do I know what I'm doing? But I love to paint. I like to make the silly things work and I have a lot to get out in those colors and forms. When other people love my work, when they love it enough to buy it, when they love it enough to tell me, when they are inspired and excited to make their own work...dang, it's a great feeling.
So, then, a warm and wonderful thank you to everybody who ever bought a Buffington or a Baldanza or ever gave me an honest compliment. Your words help me push past the doubts and keep me futzing along with these paintings.
And it's about time, too, that I step outside of my little coccoon and start looking more at the art and artists around me. There are some very talented and hardworking painters and potters in this part of the world and I promise to tell you about them. I just have to carve a little time to look and a little time to write about it.
Tonight, though, I'm going to clean and futz and enjoy the high of knowing that my my paintings hang and are about to hang in other people's houses and make some sort of small impact on other people's lives.
That said, there's a practical part of any art sale for me. I get to buy more art supplies...
Glory glory fabriano!
goodnight,
Rachael

By far the best thing I heard today was Muriel Rukeyser reading a poem about soda and hot dog stands at the end of over-worded days and social conventions and binary oppositions and what language means. It's worth the 47 cents or the trip to the library and it reminded me that words aren't definite even if we need them to be.
goodnight,
Rachael

Seems like, feels like, smells to me like I've been off my game lately. Creatively, my friends, I've been feeling out of sorts and off kilter and uncertain more than I have felt confident about the art I make. So I wonder, how often do you feel off-kilter with the work you are making? Why do we wake up wondering and go to sleep wondering what we are making, why we are making, and what it matters in the big bad world? I'm trying to pay attention to my gut and to break through the un-sure but sometimes it's not so easy...
I've been sparse in part because of a big project at work and a lot of teaching and preparing to teach. Each time I approach a teaching situation (whether it is giving a talk about process and painting or teaching teachers to integrate art into their lessons or teaching art appreciation) I follow the same pattern: excitement, research, planning, over-the-top unneccessary research, anxiety, over-planning, more research, and then when I walk into the class, I wing it. Improvisation, my friends, is a lie. There's a lot of plotting and planning that goes into being able to be loose, talk on the spot, and meet the needs of the students in front of me.

More learning from plants then...

As I tromp through my garden (some of the seedlings got their little heads lopped off with the pouring down rain this weekend but others are coming along nicely. Resilence, even in the plant world, is an important trait.)

I'll leave you, then, with one of my paper clay products, a moody little guy who now sits by the window wondering. Wouldn't we all if we could...

I'll be resilient, searching for my true marks, and paying attention to the plants and the paper and the clay.
take care,
Rachael

So with all that said I am scribbling away in my sketchbook, thinking about all the art I haven't seen in all the cities I want to get to (like Chicago, or New York to see LaFarge's Buddha, or the visionaries in Baltimore.)
I will travel soon enough and I'll harvest my vegetables soon enough and I'm painting again with the promise of a real bloom when I have time and space and inspiration all at once over two well wished for weeks in the North Carolina mountains.
Until then, sure, my bliggity blogging might be short but my days and dreams are long. Yours?
take care,
Rachael

I confess my friends that I have not been painting much but I have had my hands in the dirt as I prepare my gardens. My dad and my good friend Molly have been so much help as I prepare what I am lovingly reffering to as my vegetable plot and learn such things as weed identification, thining basics, how to edge, what the hell a mulch is, and all sorts of things I've wanted to know for a long time. Sometimes when my days off go by and I haven't been up to the studio, I fuss at myself for not creating, not playing with color, not doing what I think it is I am supposed to be doing but this time around I put the starbucks show to bed and spent the rest of my time in the dirt. I don't regret a moment and think this is all one continuiumm of dirt and color and growth and weeding and wondering what's going to come up when I do the dirty work. I am tempted to go down to the garden tomorrow morning early with the worms and see what I can draw but more likely I'll go down there and cultivate soil or plant lettuce or put the pansies in. There's a little too much to do frankly but it's all good work, the kind that makes my shoulders hurt a little and has alreday stained the kneecaps of a couple of pairs of jeans.
Everytime I sell work I feel great about myself and the things I make and this time was no different, but I just turned that cash around into groceries and garden and now I'm back to the dirt.
take care,
Rachae;

big thanks again to my dad without whom I wouldn't be here and certainly wouldn't be so excited about growing and learning from growing...