Time spent in the studio is often a carefully constructed assemblage of elements including smoke, mirrors and slight of hand. When I am in my creative mindset, I rarely know how something will turn out. I may have an idea… but this usually proves to be only the start of something completely different.
I would love to say that 100% of my time in the studio is spent creating art. But there are many things that happen in the studio that are part of the art process… but alone, are not art. In reality there are many hours spent doing paperwork in various forms. Packing up artwork to be shipped out…unpacking artwork when it returns. Along with time spent writing and exploring ideas to figure out what my current focus is and what direction I want to move forward in. Taking all that information and determining what that might look like and what steps to take to make that actually happen. Then there is just the basic cleaning and putting things back were they belong after using them… physically and emotionally. The remaining time is used to create the artwork. I started to create a pie chart to represent this phenomenon, but I started to find it depressing… so I stopped.
This is what I consider my personal lantern that allows all the skeletons of my insecurities to be projected on the walls in distorted and larger than life forms. I have found that there is no way to hide from these, as they are things that must be confronted and if not exorcised from the mind you have to at least makes friends with them on some level. I have learned that the best way to move forward and learn how to do something is by just doing it and learning as you move though the process. I have learned more from my mistakes in doing art than I could have even learned by reading a book. But the cool thing about insecurities is that when you face them and shine a light of understanding and compassion upon them they start to dissipate. Leaving only the bright light of the lantern to light the path on your journey.