New Home, new work space, but not new me.

Back in July Mum, Andy and I moved into a new home. Back then I was so disillusioned with the art world (local, and cultural as well as commercial, in many ways I still am) that I was determined I was going to pack the easel, paints, brushes and canvases away and have nothing more to do with this great waste of time and money!

Now I heard a sermon or two about worship being a glorious waste of time, a lavish outpouring of our gifts, and I have to admit it stung me a little, but at the time I managed to ignore it. So when we moved house I was still planning to pack up the art paraphernalia and live a normal live.

In the one spare room I wanted a bedroom for grandchildren. However in the two and a bit months we have been here there have been one after another person telling me that I must start work again, to the point that I have given in. The first thing I did was finish a piece of glass that had been started back at the old house. It was very pity blue bell vase, which I gifted to a close friend. It felt right to do that; just do something without worrying about a sale or a market. But that was still that, I had not quite got back into the swing of things.

But more nudges from here and there till three days ago I thought ok I will try to pick up all these bits of work lying around started but no more than that. I did that but as I was doing that I became aware of old paintings that were laying around, just not quite loved and I thought I should revisit these and rework them till I am happy with them.

This revisiting is in itself a bit of a confirmation because the theme of sermons at the moment is 'going back the way we have come'. Now I cant help but think reworking is part of that. Go back before you can go forward. I had got myself into such a bind of costs, even this communication carries costs but I wanted to say this to myself as much as anyone else, I am going back the way I have come. I am working on painting and communicating and trying to be blindly unaware of what the point is, who it is for, how it will be seen, to a point, how it will be paid for. I want to create a reasonable body of new work before I do any thinking about where it can be seen.

Same old conflicted self but trying to come to terms with being who I am and not how to make it work.