Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Remember how I was going to start The Legend of Hare Terra website project in the New Year? Well, it still might happen THIS year, but I realized I bit off way more than I could chew editing my Parsons Art Retrospective. I had no idea I had so much amazing stuff I wanted to share! The editing process to get the Parsons paintings and drawings “print ready” was much more time consuming then I had anticipated (and still not completed I might add). It may or may not have to do with the fact that I’m a perfectionist and I may be treating these works as perfectly preserved historical archives. I also realized that if I am sharing the Parsons works, then my Art Retrospective would be incomplete without the Dartmouth works, and the Celebrating Femininity works… and, and, and! Obviously, I mean one does not go into writing and preparing art work for their autobiography lightly. In all seriousness, I had no idea my decision to let my audience “get to know me” was going to be such an enormous undertaking. Or that it was going to make me feel so emotionally drained. But duh, here’s a known factoid, everything I do becomes an enormous undertaking. I’m a complex being, what can I say?

You might be shocked to discover that I am somewhat of a self sabotaging expert. Not really though, because if you knew me you would know this is quite obvious! I am one of those people who have a To-Do list that keeps getting longer each day, because of course one project leads to another! Like most artistic geniuses, I keep coming up with fabulous new things I want to create! I always have tons of ideas and projects rolling at once and I admit that it is super easy for me to get sent off course chasing that next inspirational high. The muse is the master! Creativity does not work well on the To-Do list, nor does it fit into a schedule. Inspiration comes when it comes, stopping in the middle to accomplish ones scheduled menial task could ruin the flow. Or so I convince myself when I neglect the mountain of laundry, the suggested thrice weekly 1000 word blog post, or launching the upcoming Legend of Hare Terra website project.

Yes! The thrill of New Work! This did happen to me over the holidays. But only because I was totally fed up with the complete and total boredom of editing the older work pixel by pixel, brainstorming marketing ideas, coming up with the next blog post that maybe someone 12 months from now was going to read… I got sour. Combine that with family drama, Holiday Stress and the Mr. was absolutely begging me to take a break! So much for embracing the suck, screw that! At least temporarily, I am only human after all. So then there was delightful low key family time, too much baking, way too much eating, too many warm and fuzzy nights in front of the TV… and then… just too much down time in general. I do not well with inactivity, I needed to make something!

For fun I did a ton of random drawings, mostly birds for some unknown reason, got that out of my system and then decided to focus on a new floral painting series. I disappeared off line for weeks, all the buzz and noise of outside voices completely gone, no comments, likes or favorites, no worries of blog posts, descriptions, keywords or SEO crap, just me and the work. The time away painting was fabulous, rejuvenating and reminded me exactly how much I really miss painting and how much I dislike all the stuff that goes with it. I’m sorry extroverts, I know you can’t relate and you love “the show!” but not me, not even a little. I’d be perfectly happy living life as a hermit, no, not in a cave, but you know what I meant. Anyway, Art doesn’t exist if no one ever sees it, so back to Embracing the Suck. Breaks are fine if you can afford to take them but if you want to succeed, even a little, you do have to put the big girl pants back on every now and again.

And I can’t just forget about all that work I have already created. Because while I keep saying (and feeling like) I’m starting over, I’m not exactly starting over from scratch am I? Not in the sense that it’s day one with creating artwork anyway. Let’s face it, as of right now I have over 2,600 works currently available as Print on Demand. That’s a lot, something to be proud of, and it would definitely not have happened if I started painting my first piece last January. In fact, it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t spent the majority of 2019 editing the works for POD! Fortunately many sold paintings are currently available as prints today because I had the foresight to take really good photos before I let go of the work. (Hint: Take really good, high quality photos of absolutely everything you make – you may also want that work for POD someday)

So why not just be happy with what I have already accomplished? Because there are decades of fabulous works still to choose from. I have been incredibly prolific. In fact, I almost feel ridiculous saying this, but I am daunted by the enormity of my own body of work! While this is actually a great problem to have, the down side is that there is only me to tackle it all, leaving me with the constantly fluctuating conclusion of where to best invest my limited time. Slave labor or chasing the muse? I frequently feel as though I should just leave the older work behind and move on from this point forward. There are only so many hours in the day after all. But the problem with that is, it’s really good work; some that I have previously exhibited and know people enjoy. And, the Parsons pieces I recently edited and posted, garnered serious interest, much to my delight, many have gone viral on Pinterest. This leads me to believe that if I were to market these images properly, they would have great selling potential. So I can’t let them go, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to get these works out there to a broader audience just because I’m over menial tasks such as editing... and, Hello, where would we be without the Art Retrospective for the autobiography? Kidding...

As you can see, I did not have a big New Year, New Me Plan to announce, I’m mostly here to remind myself to continue on the path I started last January (2019). As meandering as my current path is, it does lead forward in one way or another. Even if it does feel like I am getting my feet tangled up in my own hair like the women from Fettered Femininity! The forward motion may be incremental; I will most likely divert off into the woods here and there along the way, but it’s how I need to do things. I’m learning to accept and embrace my flaws and do my best to work them to my advantage. You know Artists; it’s all about the journey! Or that’s what we tell ourselves when we have no idea why we do what we do.

By the way, of course there were other New Year’s resolutions, I switched from failing to learn Chinese on Duolingo to succeeding in French and I’ve gotten back into my workout routine… I gained 3 pounds because of it but we won’t mention that. So I mean, it’s not ALL art, all of the time. I do have a few other interests, gosh.

Up next, I’ll share my new floral series entitled “Floravased”. In the meantime here’s wishing you a very Happy New Year!

For more Art and Information on Amy E. Fraser go to Aefraser.com