Friday, July 6, 2012

The War of Art

Hello!  I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!  We watched the fireworks over the lake with my family at the cottage.  Little I was able to stay up for them and couldn't stop talking about them when we were walking home after the fireworks.  "Boom, Boom" is all she kept saying, so funny!


The husband, Little I and I are back from the island and I am trying to get back into my own personal art and art business.  My brother and I recently had a conversation about "art".  He graduated with a degree in professional writing and would like to someday write for a living.  He read a book that he highly recommended called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (most known for writing Legend of Bagger Vance). Of course I downloaded it on my kindle immediately and began reading!
  This book is awesome for any person who feels they were born to do something creative in their life for a living.  Many of us want to do something creative whether it be painting, sculpting, writing, cooking, etc but put it off and procrastinate in doing it.  We make up excuses on why we cannot work on our creative endeavor thus making ourselves unhappy and feeling empty and sometimes this can be the gateway to destructive habits.  Pressfield tells us to WORK, who cares if the product is horrible.  The actual process of working and finishing something is very important to us as creative individuals.   Another really important point Pressfield makes is that often times we get our best ideas as we are working.  We should not wait until the ideas come before working.  I agree with this immensely!  Often when I am working on a painting or collage do I get my best ideas.  The creative gods or Muses smile down on hard work and whisper ideas into your ears!

There are so many more important insights in this book, if you get a chance you should read it!  I will probably be sharing with you more about this book in later posts.  I am so inspired by Pressfields no nonsense writing style basically telling me to GET to WORK and NO EXCUSES!  I really need this kick in the butt especially because I really don't have excuses on not to work on my own personal art anymore.  Did I mention I finally finished my masters!  Hooray!  I officially graduate in August!

Well I am off to paint a little before Little I wakes up.  It is currently 8 am here and she is STILL asleep!  Wow!

Have a great day!

Artwork I am currently working on inspired by the island!



1 comment:

  1. Hi Michelle,

    So glad to see you are finding time to paint! Thanks for this post. The painting is lovely -- I look forward to seeing what, if anything else you do to it. Congrats on your Master's!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for the comments! I love to hear what you have to say:)