Feeling today in the contrast of light and shadow.
Is this really the beginning of something great?
Getting caught up in the new year and lofty goals.
Getting caught up in self-doubt and apprehension.
Getting caught up in all the details.
Getting caught up in what’s most important in prioritizing tasks.
Getting caught up in making my experience awesome.
Too many things! Seems overly simplistic and obvious too even spend the time writing it here but there is so much that can overpower me. I now choose instead to be empowered by my desire to create happiness and my need to get the images blaring in my head out. The images, the words, the sounds.
Letting overwhelm fall away
Asking myself for quiet
Soft and gentle quiet
To listen with love
Receive with grace
Give openly my creative force
Sparked from within
Reflected out
Images of all shapes and color burst forth
With creativity unleashed
Dancing my way from overwhelm
Energy to be fully expressed
All the tendrils of experience released
In my most recent episode of Creativity Unleashed there is a point where I exclaim, “This is the beginning of something great!”
Totally unscripted and off the cuff.
This tendril of experience I will hold onto moving forward.
What does moving forward look like?
This is a great question and one that calls for clarity.
Clarity for me has meant drinking a little less and moving my body a little more.
Through this clarity I gained the insight to let fall away that which isn’t serving my purpose. If my purpose is painting. Then fucking paint already. Everything else comes after.
Moving forward from this moment; lofty ideas and grand new year plans that start out with a blast and quickly get buried under winter cover are kept safe to sprout in Spring, blossom into Summer, Fall into something that’s growing with each season, and plan for what’s next come Winter.
I vowed to bring Creativity Unleashed on the daily in a variety of ways: painting, photographing, and writing. Weaving it all together for a mind blowing body of art and bursting onto the art scene like a pro. (Now, as I proof read this I’m not surprised I got overwhelmed.)
And then it snowed.
That’s not the reason. It’s not even a good excuse.
Probably no surprise to anyone and not to me either that I got overwhelmed and confused in my lofty ideas. Disoriented in my own plan. Good thing the best plans make room for inevitable mistakes, as well as, the occasional snow storm. The tendrils of experience catching me up and quickly off guard.
I stopped.
I stopped everything and focused on the most important thing: painting.
I’ve been spending the past few weeks in painting storm.
Painting with sides of movement; yoga and dance indoors and brave excursions into this dessert hinterland. With meditation, journaling, and coaching around clarity of vision for my desired result: making an art business a money making business.
Before I tailspin into my money making madness and save that for another episode, let me try to break down what might be most useful from this episode of Creativity Unleashed:
Have lofty ideas and ideally express them but if need be, first record them. Write down that brilliant idea or take a video showing the idea if only for yourself, to know you have brilliant ideas.
Heart on heart on heart rainbow reflection. My example of a painting expressing tendrils of experience. 2 paintings I’ve started that are mirror images creating a heart when they are put together. Seems totally loving right? It’s my initials. I’ve decided to be OK with all the aspects of who I am in an attempt of living an honest existence. I have some delightfully narcissistic tendencies that I no longer have the energy to deny.
These 2 paintings are also in a category that seems the antithesis of the fine art. Clever. A saying to the effect of, don’t be clever, be clear comes to mind. Again, what can I do? I thought of it, I did it. Then because they were nearby when I spoke of tendrils I picked them up and put them in front of the camera.
The upside of reflection - tendrils of rainbow hearts
There’s no downside, just another upside. Blue Kitty approved.
What does success look like?
Not sure?
How about, what does failure look like?
It’s important to imagine both. Play it out.
I had a brilliant idea! To go to art openings and start to step out and connect with the art world in my community. I lined-up a few opening nights. Then, when they came around, I couldn’t go. If I can’t socialize and go out to support artists and galleries this whole business of making art a business might not work. Failure.
I’m not ready.
New people and new places are scary.
Maybe because it’s winter and I’ve just started painting again for reals, I was able to sit down with a glass of wine the night of the art openings and instead of beating myself up, ask myself what does ready look like? What about new people and places scares me? What will I do when I’m ready?
1st, I pondered the new places and people and reinforced with myself that I have social anxiety. I’m totally uncomfortable and weirded out by new people and new places. After spending a lot of years pretending I wasn’t and then using drugs and alcohol to help barrel through them and make myself sick in the process, I’m happy to be honest with myself about it. Success!
Now what? I made a simple adjustment to my brilliant idea; go to the galleries and shows I’m interested in on any other day than the opening. That feels way more comfortable and since having thought that I’ve found a few I want to check-out. Stay tuned to find out how that goes.
What does ready look like?
To me, ready looks like having a little bit bigger body of work done and a portfolio on my website created. Great news! I have a dozen paintings in the works and about 6 that are almost done. That makes 12 total. A solid start to the portfolio. Success!
2nd, I did some math; if I want to do this for the rest of my life, my body of work will only grow and the paintings I paint now will indeed be the beginning of something great. As an example; if I do 2 paintings a month, that’s 24 paintings a year. After 5 years, I’ll have painted 120 paintings. After 50 years. I’ll have painted 1200 paintings.
If I put myself in the shoes of a gallery or an art collector, hard core supporters of the art I imagined; the more work I do the more the previous pieces will be worth. This is my thought process and is very likely totally wrong, I honestly have zero idea. I haven’t done a lot of homework in this area either. I’m gonna just create thoughts again and guess that there’s little rhyme or reason to the value of art. Has anyone given insights in this area? I ask out loud as I stare blankly at the Google search bar. There is a desired expertise for me around this important detail for sure! Writing this now makes the kind of sense to me that pairs perfectly with the creation of art itself. Especially abstract art. Time to work some reality into this picture. Looking forward.
I can’t stop this truth telling spree! I’ve got some serious money stuff around not only my worth but the worth of what I create. Even now, doing a bit of math here, I get nervous. I refuse to feed the lie of the starving artist any longer and I’m done with it.
There is a strong apprehension in sharing this.
Shhhh, Sam…. Don’t tell anyone…
I want to be a successful artist.
I want my art business to be a money making business.
Sam, you can’t say that! You have to say that you’re driven to making art by divine force. Truth. That divine force also wants you to be successful and successful is in part profitable. Not at the expense of others, at the pleasure and joy of others. Not gross profits. Shit! That’s totally a thing; gross profits. Our language around money is so fraught with what seem to be damned trappings of the soul.
Failure!
How about net profits from painting? A safety net supporting Creativity Unleashed. Tendrils of support.
Success!
A work in progress; The story of my life.
Somewhere in my past I got stuck in this financial maze. I let my insecurities get the better of me. I let the insecurities of people that love me get the better of me. I hear the echoes of concern, ‘have a back-up plan, a good career, something safer, you don’t want to be a struggling artist for life.’
I let my insecurities get the better of me and turned toward the “good career” so I would be financially stable. I told myself, as others did too, I could paint as a hobby, on the side.
I never painted on the side.
Then, I ended up losing the “good career”.
I was left devastated and in the midst of a potent life crisis.
It turns out, the big failure happened.
That “good career” money gone.
I’m now living with my mom.
The completely amazing and rich thing to me is, I knew the living with my mom part was going to happen. Only child, divorced parents, inevitable and turns out a life saver. I put this idea on myself a long time ago. I also envisioned I’d be living in a cottage. I never thought about the money.
So it turns out I envisioned with acute clarity exactly what I’m doing now.
Success!
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If I can create this reality, then my theory is now to create more from the infinite possibilities available to me. Grabbing the tendrils of experience I envision with acute clarity and energizing them into existence.
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Showing myself and others what it looks like.
The truth.
The successes.
The failures.
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Moving forward ready… looks like creativity unleashed on the daily. painting almost everyday. Building a body of work that I share with the world. Making more money the more I do it.
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Well, that’s some clarity alright! I went on a profound tangent there and look what came of it? A couple clear sentences of what moving forward looks like. A little shaky about the blatant money statement. But hot damn! Cardi B won a Grammy last night for such a blatant statement so I’m gonna follow suit.
It looks like the beginning of something great.
There is so much more in the episode though and I’ll just skip to the end.
In being honest with myself as a practice and confronting the dreaded money stuff, I’m learning how to re-write my outdated and completely fictional beliefs around money with new ones.
Great news! There’s a wealth of information out there!
Similar to the self help books I used to hide and now don’t care who knows because all that personal growth work has done me wonders. I’m now re-writing my financial story to make an art business a money making business.
Currently with the help of Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badass at Making Money. The exercises and insights have been eye opening and super helpful and I will leave you with this excerpt and get my butt back in front of the easel.
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“Take responsibility for the fact that you created everything in your life via your thoughts, beliefs, focus, actions, and energy, and that you have the power to shift your mindset, raise your frequency and create new things that will serve you better.”
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It might be snowing outside but today’s painting will be fields of green under blue skies accompanied by rainbow tendrils of experience.
Cheers!
PS. Now here’s what you’ve really come here for… Emerald Heart Vagina.
