Pacing

      Today after countless days of staring at my map covered canvas, I decided to sit down in my chair. I note the importance of this as it seems that is what I do, avoid the chair, avoid the chair that is set up for writing, avoid the chair that is set up for painting, because if I avoid the chair I can avoid focusing my world down to creating. Sounds contradictory when I declare myself an artist and writer, but this is the truth. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what I'll be painting as I scoot about my ten by fourteen foot room tidying it up, peeking at my canvas, just as I spend a fair amount of time thinking about my biography of Trina Schart Hyman, toting along the latest notes to add in to the Artist chapter. But it seems, when I am ready, I am ready. So today was one such day.

      I tugged my paint-splattered overalls down from the closet, threw on my checker-boarded-ugly-as-sin shirt I purchased once at a thrift store, dug around for my crocheted christmas colored hat and sat down in the chair to address the canvas. Addressing a canvas involves patience. I have countless people mention my need to be patient with myself--a flaw I have not successfully avoided, my canvas doesn't escape this either. I toss paint around thrilled to mix a color here, a color there, smell the oil paint on my brush, rub it into my overalls, rub it into the painting, but above all, I am not inclined to be patient enough to measure and take my time with whatever it is I am painting. Consequently, after my map was throughly covered in skin color, I had to go back and patiently remeasure everything so that my face no longer looked like a squished hot dog but rather a human face in profile. 

    Patience. 

    Paint.

    I should have been Jackson Pollock.