jars of clay

I spent time in my studio yesterday cleaning, reorganizing, getting it into some kind of recognizeable order for good work flow. It's only a bedroom space, but I realize how fortunate I am to have a private space just for that purpose at all. I remember starting out years ago, how I started in the corner of our bedroom, then moved downstairs to the kitchen, then our front room, and now a vacated room upstairs again. I couldn't do what I do without that space, or not as easily or as well. I also ordered 7 or 8 books on color theory, contemporary artists I admire (Wolf Kahn, Wayne Thiebaud, David Hockney). A friend loaned me a precious retrospective on surrealist Susan Seddon Boulet. There are times when change is in order. My prior training, classical realism, is something I will never abandon, but something needs to be changed. I feel like I'm using a shovel to cut a diamond. I suppose even contemplating a change like this is a luxury, but it had to become a necessity. Another friend tells me to do whatever it takes. I agree.

So I've been thinking and studying hard, writing down notes and contemplating what it is I want to say to the world creatively. It's almost like preparing for marriage-you get so into the china patterns, trousseau, who's coming and what the music will be that you forget it's going to be a real, sometimes magical, sometimes clumsy and bad, foray into a REAL change in your life, a new influence that may or may not work well, and it will take practice no matter how great those untouched paint tubes look now. What I have to do now is simply PAINT!! Many things brought me to this place. It won't happen overnight. But it also wouldn't happen at all had I not first made the decision, and secondly, got the necessary things to physically do it.

Seems simple enough...but how many dreams lay on the shelf gathering dust because we just don't believe we're worth it, the effort is worth it, or even possible, or it's easier to look at that pretty dream and not make of it the stuff of earth. Crystal dreams are realized in jars of clay.