Just Do It! (thanks Nike)

April 12th, 2006

OK, I told you I had signed up to the collage explorations group, right? Well, the 2nd exercise has been posted and I haven’t even attempted the 1st one yet I’ve been saying that it’s because I haven’t got enough time and I’ve got too many other things to do first before I can commit my time and energy to doing the excercises - before I can learn something new! I had the same feelings when I joined the watercolour collage group, and I never did get involved in thegroup and slowly drifted away from it - after buying all the supplies - and never even attenpted to actually make a watercolour collage.It made me think about all the reasons I give for not doing something, everything from lack of materials (ohhh yeah, right!) to lack of time, but if I don’t have time, with no kids, and 9-5 , who does have time? I read in Kelly Angard’s blog that the things that stop us from doing stuff is in fact fear, and it’s the reason we make so many excuses. So, what am I afraid of?

afraid of ‘wasting’ my art materials? Surely it’s a bigger waste when paints sit in a box for so long, unused, that the start to separate, solidify, thicken and are eventually un-useable and need to be binned?
afraid of running out of not having enough time to finish the numerous other projects I have on the go? Maybe the need for deadlines make me complete the work for those other projects, and knowing that I have to send something off because there is someone else waiting for them somewhere.
afraid to show myself up as the fraud I really am? I’m not really good at this stuff, it’s just a justification of my time, and the money I spend. The art I make isn’t actually good, it’s just a figment of other peoples’ imagination, they haven’t seen what other people make. Those people are proper artists. Maybe I’m afraid of hearing those words and believing them to be true.
afraid of showing people a real piece of me, instead of what I think ‘they’ want to see? Perhaps it is time to stop worrying about what other people think and just create for myself.