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Human Beings get set in their ways. It is scary to try something different. We can go for a long time with what work’s or seemingly works, but there is a risk of creating staid, uninspired, and just plain boring work.   All areas of life are susceptible,  particularly in my life as an artist.

Winter can be a period of bleakness. Conversely, it can also be one of beauty, focus, and challenge. It is the challenge that encourages growth, as the spring to come.

I have always lived in a place with four seasons.  “Winter pauses, patient, poised, white, waiting….”[i]  The pauses are where life regenerates. True, one has to fight cabin fever. The temptation is to give in to the urge to eat the rest of the fudge that your daughter made at Christmas, or drown your sorrows on too much social media.

I have notes pinned around my studio as reminders to myself to continue to work toward the person I want to be. Two of my current favorites are simply the word FIGHT!!!!...and “Be Dangerous!!!”. I also keep in a prominent place St. Francis’s prayer, the one that begins with “God grant me the serenity….and ends with; “and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Trying something different

My main artistic expression is oil painting. I love their sensuous malleability and range of color. It also loans itself to many techniques and emotions. Sometimes I get stuck. It is like the winter of bleakness, where nothing seems to work, and staying stalwart is not so easy. What is easy is to succumb to the fudge.  There are ways to conquer this mountain, one of them is to try something different. So out come the watercolors, pastels and anything else that can break this stalemate. Out come the spray bottles, the rubbing alcohol, and the H20. Awakening a playful spirit that may have been sleeping for a while is the objective. I fill some spray bottles with highly concentrated watercolor, some with water, and some with alcohol. I may or may not have an idea of the outcome.

Mixed Media

Working with several media on one painting is a delight. A favorite approach of mine is to lay down swathes of vivid pastel, and then go wild with the spray bottles. Water dissolves the pastel, making it runny and causing blooms.[ii]  Alcohol results in interesting reticulations like those you see in mud puddles that have oil in them. The bottles of concentrated but dissolved watercolor intensify what is already there. After this wild spree of applying color alternately with water and alcohol I let the whole thing dry to come back later and add more pastel. Pastel and watercolor are essentially the same medium, with watercolor having more of the binder, gum Arabic, than the pastel. Doing a couple of these mixed media pieces revitalizes my oil painting. Here is a work done in this manner, of some of my favorite country, the east side of the Sierra. I recommend a departure from routine to anyone. It helps me get out of the doldrums. What do you do to get your motor running again?