Vacation

Here's a picture of Aspen chillin' in my studio. Check out those chubby cheeks - I couldn't think of a cuter studio companion. I can't wait until she's old enough to have her own little easel!

She's standing in front of my huge pile of gold picture frames, which I just organized last week. Nate's been bugging me about how many frames I have sitting in my studio ever since he walked in and saw how much wall space they're taking up. I really shouldn't buy any more gold frames until I use all of these - my work just doesn't look good in them. The painting in this picture is in a "silver" frame, which isn't really silver at all, but more of a cool gold. This color of metal leaf does my paintings more justice than yellow-gold.

I've been spending as much time as possible in my studio lately, so I'm making some progress in finishing enough paintings to fill all of those extra frames!

Tomorrow morning we're heading down to Telluride for a week's vacation. We're renting a condo and we'll have friends stopping by on the weekend. I'm planning to do a lot of hiking and relaxing in the lodge, and gathering a ton of reference material for my show at the end of the year. I'm taking my pochade box so I can do some plein air painting while we're there - I haven't painted outdoors since last fall, and I've got Estes Park Plein Air coming up in August, so I'd better get back into it!!

If You Knew You Couldn't Fail?

"Moraine Park"
Oil on Birch Panel
16x20"
2007




When I was out yesterday I saw a sign that said, "What would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?"

What a great question.

What would YOU attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?

I would attempt to make a living being an artist. And being as that's what I'm doing right now, I feel good about my answer to this question, and the direction I'm taking my life right now.

I like security, so I've spent a lot of years doing things I didn't want to do because I feared failing at what I really wanted to do. Now that I'm doing what I've always wanted to do, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.

I feel free.

That's not to say that there haven't been scary moments in the past few months. Nate officially quit his job to work full-time at his house-building business, which means we're both self-employed, and that I have a bit of pressure to provide some income with my art. And between moving and traveling and Nate quitting his job, I've had a few moments where I've woken up at 3 am and wondered what the heck we're doing. But every morning I wake up and feel reassured that we're both doing what we're supposed to be doing right now, and that it will work out how it's supposed to work out.

It's nice to finally let go of that fear of failure, and jump right in!