The Jealous Artist

  I should have more accurately named this blog, the Jealous Artist, because I can be moved quickly and often to a state of deep, lingering envy.

  I came back from a week in Maine yesterday reasonably happy that I’d made some hard-won progress in my battle with perspective and liked that I’d done two paintings of chairs quite outside my comfort zone. 

 To be honest, I don’t have a comfort zone with my art but there are levels of angst - a painting of heirloom tomatoes in a row, for instance, making me feel less I’m-a-loser-why-did-I-ever think-I-could-do-this than a rendering of a complicated chair at a breakfast table.

 

 At any rate, I met last night with the artists I’m sharing an annual October show with which we call alternately Six Women Painting or Five Women Painting or one year, Five Women Painting and a Guy. There was the normal decision-making that goes on with these things – one of the six decided she didn’t want to participate causing a name change, re-division of the expenses, postcard re-design, but I sympathized. I understand self-doubt.
  I have a harder time with success.  So, what woke me up at 3 a.m. this morning  was learning at the meeting that one of the artists was accepted in a prestigious gallery and another was publishing a lovely calendar of her art which she's already sold 150  copies of after a mere mention on facebook.

    They deserve these triumphs, I feel, not because they’re lucky but because they know how to paint a chair correctly.