So far, 2020 is shaping up to be a year of taking stock. Every year since 2016 when I decided to try my hand at displaying art in shows, and then got into local markets, I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to outdo the previous year. It was a lot to try and manage with a full time job, and a family, and life obligations. And I still always felt like it was never enough - that I could have been doing more, and hustling harder. I was striving for something I couldn’t even identify, really. Validation, probably. Making up for lost time, maybe. And a certain level of competitiveness, too, was likely part of it.

Whereas over the last couple of years I’d spend a lot of time actively seeking out art calls, I’m not putting a lot of my energy into finding art opportunities right now. I figure if they present themselves, then I can seize the chance and apply. As it is, I have a significant project lined up for spring, plus over the next few months my teenager is getting ready to graduate high school and my day job will be making some structural changes, so…I don’t think I’ll even be able to spare the time and the effort for the smaller local shows. And markets are off the table altogether. The amount of work involved to prep for and run a booth even for a single half-day event has never justified the return on all of the investment, and I honestly don’t really enjoy them.

I’m spending some time doing personal work - drawing and painting on my own schedule, for practice. And for fun. I also received a Brooklyn Art Library sketchbook for Christmas, so I’m s l o w l y working on filling the pages. I’ll need to return it by August, so I think I might want to focus on that project a little more. There have been art opportunities I’ve watched pass me by over the last couple of months, and it’s been hard to fight the impulse to apply to things just to be applying, but, that’s not really an approach that serves my goals right now. There’s something coming up in the summer I think I’ll try for, though.

Art related things on my radar at the moment: varnishing some finished panels, prepping a couple of medium sized canvases, filling the pages of my sketchbook. I may move my newsletter to my website hosting and resurrect it, although I’m on the fence about that and maintaining my artist page on Facebook, which has been basically at “set it and forget it” for a couple of years now. The administrative side of being an artist is where the real work is. No one ever tells you that. It’s just something you end up having to learn.

Miscellania

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