Thinking Too Much

 Sometimes thinking too much is dangerous. I have spent a lifetime of thinking about the business of being a painter. I spent years trying to figure out how to sell, how to market successfully and worrying about being marginalized by not hanging around the right galleries, museums and arty people.

 

 I spent years building up my teaching business, running all over the place teaching workshops, teaching locally and coaching students online. Writing tutorials and so forth.  I've been asked many times to write books about painting, plein air painting, and marketing. I even seriously made the effort to sit down and write a painting book but I got too distracted by it and gave up.  I just couldn't settle down to it long enough. My best writing has been on blogs because I think in an adventurous sense. I like to write a few paragraphs and be done. As an ADD artist, that's about all of the attention span I possess as a writer.

 

 After all of this busyness, I find that I like to spend my time painting and hanging around my studio and my nature trail now. I've spent a lot of years acquiring information and learning to paint and I'm far from through acquiring knowledge. In fact I am just getting to the stage where I can study in earnest.

 

 I won't make the mistake of wringing my hands and saying why did I spend all of those years doing all of those busy things? I can accept the fact that they were important at the time and I actually cared about being a known painter then. I've been very lucky to have a good career and to be known to the people who support me in so many ways. I've learned that they are really the only people who I should care about pleasing with my work other than myself. I have learned the art of study and passion for my work as an artist. I'm excited every time I step up to the easel and see that new canvas. The masterpiece painting is just around the corner for me every time. I trust that I will do it someday.

 

 

 Once I began to give up the clubs, organizations, the competitive world of juried competitions and shows, the teaching, I began to have time to focus on the fields and trees, the cattle, rivers and marshes that I love to paint. I stopped worrying about what other painters were doing, what they were painting and where my next collector would come from. I trusted that they would arrive, and they do. I still believe in serious marketing, which I do regularly, but my approach is more focused and toward others who love the same subjects I do.

 Life is good when you are a country painter………