Life is short,
and art long,
opportunity fleeting,
experimentations perilous,
and judgment difficult.
–Hippocrates

Wikipedia tells me this quote is the beginning of a medical text by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. I believe it applies equally well to the practice of fine art. It takes a lifetime to make art, and it’s not easy.

Since I last wrote to you, I’ve been in the perilous world of experimentation, and it has been much longer than I intended. Now that it’s time for the new school year to start, it seems like a good time for a new start on the blog.

For years I have painted on location to capture shapes of the landscape. In the studio, I enlarged the plein air studies and exaggerated colors. I started to feel that I didn’t have much new to say about the work, and I wanted to try some other things. In recent months, I have been working in other media. I have sewed garments and worked in my garden. In the studio, I’ve been increasing my skill with Gelli plate monoprinting.

Through my gardening, I’ve narrowed the focus of my art to gardens as a subset of the broader landscape. I like to explore shapes and colors of flowers. My observation of the hardscape of gardens – stone walls, trellises, iron gates – has given me an appreciation of the way these elements protect and define gardens. I’m combining these elements with monoprinting in an abstract way to make the work more personal and universal.

This summer I designed a personal creativity workshop to get myself back into the groove of regular studio time and writing about my work. I’m taking an on-line class in intuitive painting called Fresh Paint from Flora Bowley and Lynzee Lynx and working exercises from other creativity resources. All of these advisors recommend writing or journaling as a way of understanding why you create art and where you want to go with your work. I’ve set goals to get back to writing my blog and to show my work, whether or not it’s “ready”.

Which brings me to the last line of the poem, judgement [is] difficult. This means both judging your own work and being open to criticism from others. It’s a long process. For now, I’m showing my work. Judgement will have to wait.