A Painting a Day

For 30 Days

From a journal entry back in November:

This year has not been kind to creative expression.

Words, paintings, spirituality even, have become little more than fleeting sensations crawling up my neck to whisper “remember when you created? Remember when you meditated? Remember when.."

These bugs nip at me all day as I feel myself acclimating to the mundaneness of a career. Questioning my time, urging me to stop all else immediately to find my way back to the journey of creation.

One of my biggest fears is losing my inspiration. Losing that curiosity - that drive. I wonder if to overcome that fear, I’ve had to let myself experience that loss to truly understand what I need.

It began simply.

I had just gotten back from a trip up north and I was already getting depressed, back in the routine of my life.

I walked by my easel, frowned, and said “I guess I’ll just paint.”

I went on Youtube and found a still life tutorial for an orange slice — it took about 30 minutes. It was mediocre at best, and yet I was so excited to run downstairs to show my roommates. That shitty orange lit up more endorphins in me than any situationship has in the past few years.

I needed more.

I told myself I would do an hour a day.

The next day, my mind couldn’t handle leaving the painting after an hour. “I could just finish this in another 30 minutes.” Immediately an hour a day became a full painting a day, for a week? two? Let’s make it 30 days.

I did seven days of food, and on the seventh day she rose to a new challenge.

I went into the challenge wanting to work on values. I wanted to really understand depth with my color and food seemed like the gateway, with the next step obviously being flowers.

Then came hands, then animals, and for my final two days, I found myself creating what I am most comfortable with.

Every day I learned something. Most days fucking sucked. But, not in the “I’m incapable way,” more in the “I want to keep going and uncovering more of myself” way, and also “this is exhausting, but I can’t stop” way.

Every day seemed to take up more of my time. The food lasted maybe two hours, and each week I added more intention, until the last two paintings took about six hours each.

I would still go to jiujitsu, the gym, act socially, all the while thinking about what I was about to go home and paint.

A few times I did have to step away from painting to sleep, but made sure to finish that in the morning before work, and another painting when I got home.

For 30 days, it was all I could think of.

The craziest part was how much people were connecting with them. In a way that I feel like my other work hasn’t reached. I put so much more time into my other pieces, so why would these cause more of a reaction? How can an 8x10 PB and banana toast get more of a response than a 48 inch painting I worked on for 2 months?

The difference between the toast and the large painting is that for 30 days, I only painted whatever the fuck I wanted to paint.

I didn’t think about what others would want, what was sellable, what my art was trying to say. I just saw something and thought, “absolutely, I can paint that.”

It’s made me start to view my art as manifestation.

Not the entitled kind of manifestation that you just write your desires down and then *poof*. But, the kind where you can align yourself in a way that feels substantial. There is this idea that you do not attract people or things, that you always attract yourself.

To consciously manifest, you must become the person that holds what you desire. If you want a relationship for example. How does that person wake up? How do they dress? How do they speak to themselves? What do you think the differences between the you that is single and the you that is in a relationship are, and how can you embody them now?

But, if you focus on what you desire as if it is what you lack, you will only attract more of that lack-ness. Because you are simply attracting that self.

Because manifestation is an art practice.

When I paint, it feels like microdosing manifestation.

In my previous paintings, I was seeking out peace. I drew out landscapes to build in a calmness. I dug into a space that might offer solace. I would paint what I thought would bring me closer to a career in art.

I painted with an incessant craving for a thing that was so far from me, and time and time again I left the canvas bleeding with the yearning I felt. Every time, I just ended up painting my self.

I saw a post recently that said “you don’t like your art because it looks like you made it.” We hope that the more we practice, one day we will be able to paint without the shadow of ourselves, without our fingerprints all over it. But, we cannot outrun ourselves. We can’t wipe our fingerprints.

And maybe that’s the difference.

Before, I was painting what I lacked. I was painting to finally find the very thing I felt I was missing.

Now, I paint to understand myself. To discover what I love to create. I paint because I can. I paint for myself.

Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward.

You will have created something.

— Kurt Vonnegut —

A painting a day for 30 days.

In almost every painting, I would get to this point where you’re blocking out the idea. It doesn’t look very good. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not good.

And every time it would get to that point, I would really consider starting over.

And every time I would have to walk away for five minutes, come back to sit back down and tell myself, let’s just see what happens.

Yes, I got to paint 30 pieces and it does feel like an accomplishment, but I think I’m more proud of the fact I never started over.

It was never that the painting was bad. It was that I just hadn’t seen the painting all the way through yet.

Such is life.