Snapshot from My Studio: September 29, 2019 at 02:34PM

I made this back in 2006, during a time when I was struggling to get myself to make *anything* that wasn’t commissioned by a client. I was so mired in perfectionist paralysis at that time of my life, so caught in the Comparison Trap, so convinced that I was a fraud, a hack, and would never live up to the potential that others had told me I had…
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I desperately wanted to make art—for joy, for the love of it—and yet I just couldn’t seem to get myself to do it! And I didn’t understand why.
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I didn’t know back then that what I was experiencing was TOTALLY NORMAL. That it was the pressure to be AMAZING, not to mention to make a LIVING from my art, that was creating this death grip around my creative flow. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have time, or that I wasn’t good enough (both lies I told myself), but simply that I wasn’t letting myself PLAY! 🖍
This Rosh Hashanah card was a rare moment in a decade-long desert when I did play. It felt silly and frivolous and stupid at the time, but my soul needed it, and to my surprise, I actually kinda liked the result in the end. 🖍
Sadly, it took several more years before I allowed myself to play like this on the regular. I didn’t get it right then—I guess I wasn’t ready yet… sigh. Well, the good news is, we can change at any moment. And the New Year is certainly an appropriate time to take inventory of what you want to change. 🖍
Almost a decade and a half later I find myself needing another reboot in my art life. I want more experimentation, more risk-taking, more collaboration, MORE! That’s what I’d like to bring into this new year.
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What about you? .
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