At the beginning of the year, my friend, artist, extreme crafter, and major inspiration, Shelley Goddard, challenged herself to work on a creative series for a small amount of time every day for the whole year. She invited others to join her in that quest by doing a similar daily project or series. I happened to be thinking about a similar New Year’s resolution, so immediately knew I wanted to join her on that journey.
I had a few false starts, trying to decide what to do. At first, I wanted to take the opportunity to force myself to do something I was uncomfortable with, like figure drawing. Then, I thought I would do something that more directly played into my New Year’s resolution goal of Fifteen for 15 – fifteen new paintings worthy of a gallery show plus 15 new song recordings worthy of a CD (which is what this web site will soon be about).
Since I got off to a pretty good start in the painting department, I was feeling like my daily exercise should be musical. This turned into a whole lot of technical mishaps, missing cables, software installation, soldering wires, replacing batteries but not much playing. I realized that the one consistent thing I had been doing for the past month or so was experimental digital imaging. I hadn’t considered using Photoshop for my challenge, since it seems like cheating. Not so much like a challenge. But it finally occurred to me that I’ve been using Photoshop for more than 20 years, and that maybe I was mistaking expertise for cheating. What I discovered is that I still love using Photoshop, especially when it is artistically, rather than simply color correcting photos. I think my daily routine will lead to new ideas and mixed media content for paintings.
So, launching into the first couple months, I have attempted to turn mediocre photos into interesting, beautiful art. I have rescued a collection of photos (mostly from my iPhone) of interesting scenes or paintings that I have in the works. It’s a nice dance between so real and surreal, the mundane and the magical.
Thanks to Shelley for inspiring me to get excited about not just something new, but something I’ve been doing for decades!
