Making and sharing art has been going so much slower than I expected.

Thankfully I can share that I finished the painting shown above for my Fine Art Memes series, but getting to that point took several weeks. I’m challenged with facing the fact that this is how I work now. And it suuuuucks. When my life had more freedom it was no problem. I could easily make at least 5-10 decent pieces in a year, even if I didn’t love them or sell them. These days I’m lucky if I can get 3 pieces completed, regardless of the quality. Creating the “Crying Jordan” painting was a little bit of a roller coaster. I went into it with so much confidence and excitement, but that shit was way harder than I thought it would be! By the time I finished, I found myself connecting with the image, crying on the inside. I thought: “It took me so long to get this done, how can I sustain any sort of art career? If I start posting work again out of nowhere, will it even matter? Maybe I should get a bunch of work done before I start sharing so I won’t have such a big gap next time. But will that matter if I take months in-between completing a piece every time?”

So many questions leading me to gray areas, which then lead me to feeling like I’m stuck all over again even though I’m taking steps forward. Taking L’s left and right. The way that I progressed through this piece mirrored how I’ve been progressing through this year in general. Wide eyed optimism at the beginning of the year, devolving into a Kanye shrug. I would like to revel in the act of finishing something, AND liking the results, but it’s hard to get away from feeling bad about the drastic change of pacing in how I work. Another act of letting go perhaps? I mean, at one point I wasn’t making anything and wasn’t sure if I ever would again. Many people would say that something is still better than nothing in this case. I don’t know.

At any rate, not sure how this turned so emo, I only wanted to share that I made some progress and painted something. At the same time I’m kind of annoyed with myself because I went from being stuck to being SLOW and that wasn’t in the plans at all. On top of all the other adjustments I’ve had to make in my life, all of this is yet another change that I have to deal with and I’m blown. I’ve been going through this in my creative life for the last 4 years now. I’m tired of this shit.