Recently, my friend and encaustic painter Linda published a blog post reflecting on the year past as well as her goals for the new year . . . including a quest to find the right balance in her life. Part of this was how to know which opportunities to say "yes" to and which ones to say "no" to. She came up with a five question "quest test" to help her evaluate opportunities.
Last year was a year of tremendous transition for me - I bought a house and completed my Master's Degree in Creativity. I committed myself to making my art a priority, and slowly shifting my business to reflect this priority. I know it's going to take time: time to find the best way of offering classes and training in creative thinking and art-making, time to figure out how to present myself and my classes, time to get into a rhythm of making and showing art. And in reading Linda's five questions, I realized that my quest was more about development, and my questions needed to reflect it. So, here are my four questions:
Does it help me develop as an artist?
Does it help me develop my business?
Does it help me develop my personal self?
Does it help me develop my relationships, including my relationship with the Divine?
And the Drawing a Day in January project on the blog seems to really fit - it gets me exercising an underused artistic muscle (I talk about my relationship to drawing here), keeps me engaged in making art and continuing to unwrap the creative process (which is the heart of my business), gets me looking at myself and other things with new eyes (and what else is personal development?), and helps me stay engaged with you folks - and since artmaking is my spiritual practice, it keeps me in touch there, too.
(I won't go into exactly how the Caption Contest fits, but I feel pretty good about that too - and dang, there are some great suggestions so far!!)
(A note about today's drawing: a semi-blind contour drawing of the Sweetie as he snoozles on the couch. Semi-blind because I let myself look each time I switched colors, and the few times I lifted the oil pastel off the page. )
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Quest Test
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6 comments:
multiple versions of the same drawing overlapping: that's bold!
Hmm, I am having a hard time not seeing the drawing in terms of my first impression -- a glowering dragon-beast -- but I like it a lot! Is your Sweetie a glowering dragon-beast?
Hi Bridget,It was nice meeting you at the blogging class. I think we have 5 degrees of separation. I know GL from another art group. I got my blog up and running and added you as a link.
Making Art,
Darlene
http://blackrabbitart.blogspot.com/
hey, you went to that class, too! get anything interesting out of it? was sister dg presiding?
gl: thanks! but not as bold when you look before starting each one . . . three colors, no looking at all - that would be bold! And yes, I loved the class - and Sister D. couldn't make it, but her o-so-capable partner was there - and got a lot of good stuff out of it - so hopefully, I'll be off at 102 this weekend . . .
mk5: actually, the Sweetie would love to know that there's a little dragon in the mix . . .
Darlene: cool! I will have to stop by your blog asap! And thanks for the link - very friendly!
oh, please don't dismiss the boldness! even if you look where you're starting each time, i think it's still pretty amazing you kept the same basic outline. :)
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