Time and Tendencies

How do you like to spend your time and what are your tendencies? I’ll never forget something my classmates and I heard from one of the toughest teachers at art school. She said, “I can share my knowledge with you but I can’t tell you how to manage your tendencies.”

So, I thought about this statement while I was painting this week. I realized several things. First of all, at the beginning of this year, I pledged to share a painting a week with you via this blog. I also started thinking about time.

Tick tock tick tock

Fact is, painting takes time. And, I have enjoyed having the structure and the rhythm of committing to sharing paintings this way. But, with this week’s particular painting, I wanted to give it more time than this one week would allow.

So this week, I’m sharing a cropped image of the work in progress for you. I’m sure you can’t even tell what I’m painting from this image. And, that’s OK. Because I wanted you to see one of the tendencies I had to manage while I was working at school from 2014 to 2018.

I had a tendency to dive into the details of whatever and whomever I was painting. So, this cropped image shows a bunch of abstract shapes. Hooray! That’s how efficient painters of any genre start their painting. So slowly but surely, I’m learning to keep things simple for as long as possible to reach the goal of a lovely painting.

Self-Awareness

So another realization I had as I worked on this painting (which you can’t see yet), is that there are lots of other things I do that can impede my painting’s progress! Like what? Oh let me see, how many ways can I count? We took a road trip to Nashville last week. It was fantastic and we saw these guys aka dear old friends who live too far away.

We also got to experience Nashville’s culture, music and art. If you’re headed that way anytime soon, try this restaurant. It was fantastic and who would think combining Southern Food and Indian food could be so delicious…but it is.

Uh oh…did you see that previous paragraph? Pretty sure it’s time to fess up and come clean with this time and tendencies post. I have a tendency to talk about food in just about every single blog post I write. Food and fruit and veggies also seem to be a favorite topic of mine to paint.

I promise to keep working away on this painting in progress. In the meantime, feel free to share your favorite or not so favorite tendencies in the comments below!