After a lot of fussing over how wide I wanted my borders to be, I cut out some watercolor paper. I don’t know what’s gnawing at me, but something is. It may just be that nervousness you get when you are about to start a painting, or maybe it is something more. Last night, I started thinking the little animals in my recent drawings looked uncomfortable, or restricted, in their clothes, and then I started thinking that was a metaphor for my own discomfort. Or perhaps I was just reading something into the drawings based on my own feelings. Art is a tricky two-way street, of sorts. It is, in one part, contrived by the artist to create an effect, while at the same time, it often reveals things about the artist, even to the artist herself (or himself). I say this realizing it is a bit humorous since I am in a quandary over pictures of animals wearing dresses. But the weird thing is that this is always true.
So, on some level, I am feeling constricted, whether it is by painting medium, subject, marketability issues, or just in general. I’m having some trouble getting to the heart of what it is that I want to do that I’m not doing. I can’t decide if I am stymied by wanting to do more things than I can possibly do all at once, or if there is something, some idea, that wants to be expressed that isn’t being expressed. I could suggest many possibilities, but I just don’t know which one is the answer, if there is one answer. All I can do is try different things on for size and see if any fit.
