Messy

This morning, I woke up early and painted! It was a snow day--it snowed a ton last night and the town seemed shut down. I had planned to go to a volunteer training at Girls, Inc., but that was canceled. It's funny, though, by 2 pm the sun is out in Denver and the streets are all clear. The sidewalks are melting. I love that about Denver--the sun warms everything.

Here's a painting I started today. I don't know what it's really about, or where it's going, or if it's finished. I found some old sketch pads and mod podged the sketches to my canvas. The sketch I did felt very primitive, or something. Sparse. I'm having fun mixing colors and being very messy.
Here's how it started.
Here's where it went
And I'm getting into the swing of journaling. I just do a little everyday. I try to not really plan, just intuit, and go with it. This kind of process seems to feel so good right now. It feels so good to be so messy.
Here's one inspired by a Neko Case song:

I've been realizing what keeps me from doing art: All the "shoulds." I have always felt like there was some way one should paint, like there were rules and techniques and a secret code that I must "get" in order to create. Instead I've been giving myself permission to just "do." There's always a little resistance--"it's so ugly!" "it's so messy!" "uggh, what would someone think of this!" But I am ignorning those things because that's not that point. There's really no point and that's what I'm liking.

And here's the kind of morning it was. All the dogs followed me downstairs. I tried to take a picture of all of them snuggled in the room, but only Gus stayed for the picture.

Happy Wednesday!
xo