when life gives me lemons

it used to be: when life gives me lemons, i make lemonade. . .
now, i somehow adapted it to my current status, i.e., when life gives me lemons, i paint! bwahahaha!

it’s not the devil or poor lighting that kills the motivation to create. it’s L.I.F.E.

life tires me, however idyllic my farmer status is, i still get the blues, once in a while. and i have used it as an excuse.

i have a history of talking to myself, explaining why today isn’t a good day to make art. bwahahaha. tho, i recently checked, not a symptom of anything serious.

sometimes, another artist in a state of being stuck in an unart rut will get my mind off my own excuses and force some truth into my head. once i heard myself tell another artist who was really coming up blank and forlorn: “paint about it.”

now looking back, i think, how dare i to make such a frivolously blasé suggestion! i’m searching for motivation, myself, too.

and just recently, i had an aha! moment! now i know what oprah has been saying about these aha moments. she writes about it, i read about it, but somehow, i have never had an aha moment as described. but recently, i did! thanks to a wonderful person (anonymity preferred, by me, for mystery. bwahahaha, for pulling me off that unart rut (i make my own words, too.)) bwahahaha!

as artists, many times we imagine how carefree the lives of the masters must have been. . . van gogh sitting in his asylum in the brilliance of southern france making those great paintings, and michaelangelo lying on his back in the comfort of a scaffolding with paint splattering his face.

then there’s gaugin all doped up and lolling around with his tahitian girls on the beach, and mary cassatt enjoying the domestic scenes she painted of mothers bathing wiggling babies. . .

i think not.

i think those people had cussed things happening all the time (just like i do) but they kept putting lines and colors on surfaces of canvas, paper, plaster.

some of them actually let us in on the stress, using intense colors and strong, passionate brush strokes. were they angry at their paintings? yes, i believe they were. maybe they were angry because they were going over them for the fiftieth time, after forty nine attempts which were just no good.

how did degas feel when he painted that little tipsy person ironing on a dismal work day? how did goya feel the day he painted this execution scene?

likely the floor was achingly cold and the mind must have been reciting a thousand reasons why it was madness to persevere under these impossible conditions.

not to mention, some of these master artists may also have had hangovers, or mothers who were dying, or chicken pox!

feel better?

even if you’re down, even if life is tough, paint about it. (i am saying that to myself now.) writing any longer will just keep me from my easel, where i should be. (and the lack of available stretched canvass, too! wonderful person, help!!! bwahahaha! now that is passing the buck, ain’t it?)

so paint about it, i say. paint through it!