I just got my art studio set up. I decided to publish my website when I have stuff to work on so I have stuff for my blog posts. We are redoing the basement/studio so I have just sitting on the couch with a cat on my lap doing nothing. Though not all bad, In the six months the art studio/basement was being redone I’ve worked out a good sleep schedule and routine. Previously I was just sitting working up the energy to make art and then half finish a bunch of things because I wasn’t well rested. I’ve figured out I need a good 4 hour nap after my graveyard shift! That’s what I learned from my doing nothing all days.
I wasn’t exactly doing nothing actually. I was thinking. Especially since having deleted social media for wasting my time and mood. I had energy and would put on the same few songs and when the lyrics bugged me I would put on an instrumental or foreign language music playlist. Wiwi. Sitting a few hours of staring off into space I’ve amassed a huge collection of ideas!
1st I didn’t know what medium I was going to work with. I wanted to have a cohesive body of work for a show so I said I’ll do all Lino-cut prints. Then I’d sit and come up with a theme at first and I came to the idea of it would be folksy country. I came up with about 40 scenes I could make. “That’ll keep me busy. I won’t run out of ideas.” Except I ran out of that idea because I no longer liked it two weeks later. It bugged me I had all this paint I would never use~ a conundrum because I would have print making ink I would never use if I just stuck to painting. Mixed media hand finished prints I thought!
Then I began thinking of themes or collections and after much thought I thought I would paint scenes from classic novels I’d been reading. A Frankenstein’s monster waking through the artic tundra or someone throwing dice from The Three Muskateers with a gentleman’s mustache. Good now when I don’t have an idea I have something to pull from. But the studio is still not done so I never got to work on them. Instead I kept thinking, and doodling and doing nothing.
All the while my Dad would tell me I should paint the faces I’m doodling or I should paint a big plate with food scraps on it. All good ideas but they weren’t what I wanted to do. Did I even want to paint the classics I thought. Meh who even reads anymore? No that theme won’t work! Back to the think station! Maybe I should do a different type of print for the random ideas I’d get such as a cloud or a candle melting. “Then my paintings won’t be cohesive” “Im just going to be a multi medium artist!” There now I can work with the many different supplies I’ve amassed when I had a great idea burst of inspiration. I had no great idea inspiration or nothing I wanted to work on. (Which was ok cause I was months out from being able to work on anything) ((months that I thought were mere weeks…))
Sitting still still doing nothing I was bored one day watching an underwater video of schools of fish and stuff. Just relaxing then my masterpiece dawned upon me! I thought I would make a cat swimming in the underwater with coral reef! “Genius!” I thought. Since then I have been slowly refining the idea and taking it from sketch to sketch and refining it in my head. I will turn these into prints I thought since only one of each grand idea cannot exist. Since then I have transferred the print to a stained and mounted Lino block.
Now that I have my masterpiece it feels like I’ve finished a book that I still want to read. I’ve found half the battle of the art was thinking of it. I joke that it’s my masterpiece yet I’ve got a ways to go. But still it is a good idea methinks! Im excited to start carving away the buttery artist linoleum to unveil my underwater kitty! In the mean times I still have random art project thoughts; and when I get bored of this series I know my next will be in the void waiting for my brain to receive the idea like a radio receiving transmissions.
bye
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