Welcome to the Life of an Insecure Artist

 Last View, 12x30, acrylic on gallery wrap canvas, copyright 2012, Claudia Van Nes

click here to view this painting on my website

I only regularly read one artist’s blog. Robert Genn. He’s generous with his information and lives in British Columbia which is so far away from Connecticut he poses no threat as a competitor.

There are better reasons he’s out of my league but the excuse of geography is easiest to accept.

 I’m pretty sure reading other such blogs would only plunge me deeper into the  pool of insecurity where I dog paddle most all the time.

I might though read a blog like this one I’m starting about a 67-year-old artist who woke up this morning with the intention of doing a quick painting on a small, oddly shaped gallery-wrapped canvas of a bridge over the Connecticut River.

This afternoon between 2 and 5 pm is when artists can bring their renderings of rivers to the Lyme Art Association for its next themed show, plunk down the entry fee and wait for the self-addressed stamped envelop to be returned later in the week checking whether the art was accepted or rejected by a juror.

I live on the Connecticut River with a straight on view in the distance of the picturesque East Haddam Bridge so have a plein air situation in my dining room. I should be able to rip out a painting of what’s constantly in front of me by 2 p.m. But, I stopped myself  because every time I do the scene it’s an epic struggle. The early morning spurt of confidence that this time it would be easy shriveled up and the burden of  a half-finished rendering of the East Haddam Bridge and all that big expanse of murky water under it and changing sky above was too great.

All this was not helped by three phone calls in rapid succession during the span of time I had not yet altogether abandoned my plan. My sister in Maine had good news from a possible buyer who found her through our shared web site. Not only that, she’d gotten another call from a wedding planner who also found the site and wanted Sarah’s paintings to decorate the barn where a client is getting married.

You can say, “Weird request.” You’d  be right, but on other hand, a bride with a wedding consultant is not a poor bride nor probably are her parents and their friends. I did rally encouraging support.

Likewise, for the second call with another artist, Joan Cole, who just got back from a Maine trip with two other artists she’s having a show with in October. She’d done 17 paintings in one week.

I then talked with one of the other artists on that trip, Jan Blencowe, to ask her to help set up this blog I’m composing here. She has her own blog and reads many others. She’d done in that same week’s time, 25 paintings of crashing waves and clam beds and dense stands of balsam trees and mountains fading into magnificent skies.

Yet, despite the self-pity, I see behind my computer the pane of glass in a large window where a cardinal pecked unrentlessly for three year through three brides, three nests in the laurel that brushes the window, three hatchings of baby cardinals before he succumbed.

 Noble Bird, 4x6, acrylic, copyright 2012, Claudia Van Nes, click here to view this painting on my website

  One of the paintings I did of my demented avian companion is in a show now. I placed him in a more tropical-looking scene because well… because being an artist I could do that.