Recommiting To My Studio Practice

While meditating yesterday, I clearly saw that I’ve been so frantically trying to learn about all the parts of starting and running an art business that I’ve been neglecting my studio practice.

I’ve been doing everything BUT making work. I’ve been reading books, watching videos, taking courses, and listening to podcasts and audiobooks about everything to do with the business of art and the art of business.

It’s been so long since I’ve touched a paint tube that it almost feels scary to open one and squeeze some out.

For months, I’ve felt overwhelmed and under health-deteriorating, both mental and physical, pressure from the timeline of how I want the art business part of my life to move. I haven’t trusted the unfolding, and I haven’t felt that the net will catch me if I jump.

Once you’ve experienced homelessness, amongst other things, like I have, survival can feel very precarious. Risks in security, financial and otherwise, are somewhat petrifying.

I cannot create from this frenetic fear, chaotic monkey mind, fight or flight or freeze survival mode, multi-tasking and finishing nothing internet tabs open galore space.

Yesterday, I decided to change where I put my energy. I am no longer going to give up my energy to anxiety. I am no longer going to think of the worst-case scenario every time.

I am reclaiming my mental, emotional, and spiritual energy. I cannot create from an headspace of panic and scarcity. For now, at least, I must make my work from a curious and open place of wholeness. I can only create from a place of hope and knowing that I am taking the steps I can—that it may not be on my timeline, but that progress is allowed to be quiet and slow, which is okay, too.

It is okay to move slowly. As the twelve-step meetings I regularly attend say, “One day at a time.” Strategic but calm is the goal—considered, centered, and generative.

So today, I’m shifting. I will spend time in the studio painting, not just researching and worrying. I will make some work. I will make bad work and good work, and all that matters is that I am recommitting to making and creating something every day. I am an artist, so I make art. I am my favorite version of myself when I am doing something creative.

Studio in chaos but here is today’s proof—the first layer of a sky for a first attempt at abstracted landscape painting (shhh more about this creative style pivot to come…)

xx,

Kait