A Painter’s Studio – Unedited.
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 by therese
I’m starting a little job this evening, but found I was out of sketchbooks. Sifting through an old one in hopes of finding some clean paper, I found an entry from 2008 that caught my eye:
“Ahh. A space of my own. My hands are covered in indigo and prussian blue. My jeans are covered in yellow ochre and burnt umber. My apron is hard and crusty in places from the dried paint. I have a smudge on my nose from satisfying an itch and my eyes are glazed and tired, but it’s comfortable - I know this place.
It is an insecure place, where nothing ever stands still. It is a landscape of soaring highs and bottomless lows. If I’m lucky, the lows are familiar enough that I can sit in it and wait for it to pass, for the morning when I can wake up, coffee in hand, anxious and knowing – TODAY IS THE DAY.
What is it that decides to ignite the spark? It is something out of my reach. This whole thing is the ultimate in abandon, in giving up, in a way. Giving up my ego and intention because nothing ends up the way I started or wanted it to be. This may be the aphrodisiac – the surprise and elation at what I’ve done, never knowing what I’m capable of and not, but the most fearsome thing of all – the thing that sticks a cork up the portal to my creativity – is the notion of the possibility that I just might suck at the thing I love the most.”