January’s past. Doesn’t New Year’s feel months ago? Eons even. Looking back at my work for Januarty, it seems simultaneously all over the place and focused on the same goal, with two directions dominant: move away from safe space, and get to the heart of what matters.

Working daily, with just yourself as motivator, feels hard sometimes, doesn’t it? Each day you need to muster discipline enough to do what it is you really want. Some days even chores feel easier. I believe that is because, when we sit down to make work, we face the unknown. We admit to the possibility of failure. We try, knowing that the ideal remains out of reach.

Never mind.

Winter geraniums. Acrylic on paper. Daily painting.

Look for what matters. Is it a memory? A feeling? How would you put it into words? Are there no words? Maybe that is the place to start. Ask yourself: Why this flower or that vase? Look for expression in your lines, your brush marks, your colors – they are the speech you are given to use.

I have been rotating among three subjects: flowers (from memory), animals (from photos), and the idea of memory, in the form of a favorite photo from 25 years ago. At the top level the approach and the media are different – everything from literal representation to abstract form.

They meet in my heart though, for each is a search for the “Why?” of the subject. Each is a journey not only to become more competent, but more expressive.

So, I research skeletons, shadows, and the planes of the face. I watch how other artists handle their brushes, and note the colors they use. Technique is one of the bones that support flesh of creation. Craft that supports expression. Then I push beyond what comes easy. Each painting, even of the same image, is a further journey. Do not repeat. Build.

Annie Dillard has a lovely passage in the Writing Life about going to work as a writer/artist: “You enter your study, open the French doors, and slide your desk and chair out into the middle of the air.” It’s all risk. Glorious, wonder, impossible risk. This month, pushing myself, the phrase “out on limb” came to mind and it didn’t wasn’t enough. “Out in mid-air” was how I felt: Branches nearby but not I’m not holding on. So. “Get to work,” Annie writes. “Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in mid air.”

Thee name of that first painting in this blog: Engine in the Air. And it sold. I’ll keep pedaling. You pedal too.