[Lessons Learned :: Mixed media on wood panel, 48" x 60"]

Have you heard of Blog Nosh?  It is a great website that features blog entries from all over under specific categories such as Art & Design, Business, Family and more.  It scours the internet for inspiring, informative & interesting entries and organizes them in once place for one-stop shopping.  They recently featured this entry which chronicled the journey of one of my larger creations, an experience that put me through the ringer creatively, hence the title of the piece, “Lessons Learned”.  When they posted this entry, I realized I never followed up on this to share what the final piece looked like.  So without further adieu – Ta Da!  The final piece, shown above, with a detail here:

I look at this piece now and feel a peculiar sense of gratification.  I don’t even consider this one of my “best” pieces, but I am very proud of it for the fact that I stuck with it even when I wanted to use it as firewood.  This piece is bumpy and layered and messy and drippy…the gold elements behind the wings were a totally spur of the moment, go-with-my-gut idea that was the one and only period of time when I felt like I was “in the zone” artistically.  The rest of the work that went into this piece was mechanics, which doesn’t make it any less creative or inspiring, but it is a piece that now has a very specific meaning to me.  This piece was about process, about trials and mistakes and feeling like I was trying to create a work of art blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back.  This piece was the hike up a mountain that is far steeper than you imagined with unexpected patches of ice and gravel, where you curse your way to the top only to feel like a superhero the next day knowing you did it despite the difficulties.

The best part is that all the work I put into this piece got to be immediately channeled into a new piece, a commission I did for this lovely soul.

[Just One More Thing :: Mixed Media on wood, 48" x 72"]

It is always difficult to see the meaningful details in pieces like these on a computer screen, but I love putting these two pieces next to each other to see the journey, to see clearly how one was the necessary preface to the other.  It is in those arduous, maddening creative experiences when we can learn our most important lessons; we simply have to be willing to accept these floundering moments without judging them, to led them take the lead instead of trying to rein them in and control them.  Sometimes mistakes have to be in charge in order to show us what we most need to learn.

“The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work.  To see them, you need only look at the work clearly – without judgment, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes.  Without emotional expectations.  Ask your work what it needs, not what you need.  Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child.” -Art & Fear