Day 15, 100 Happy Days: Painting!

Current works in progress.

I spent six glorious hours in my studio tonight. Six hours in my studio is not that much when I'm teaching, but to have six hours to myself is very unusual. And wonderful!

Sure there were approximately ten thousand other things that I needed to do, but I also needed to paint. Even though my business is painting, painting my own work (as opposed to painting for classes) still gets pushed to the back burner sometimes. I spend a lot of time putting out fires, trying to get the word out about my classes, or crunching numbers, and painting for myself can seem like a novelty in the face of all that. Paying bills becomes priority, and painting a distant memory.

But I forget that painting is necessary for my peace of mind. It is necessary for my happiness, for my self preservation, for balance in my life, and it's necessary for me to paint in order to be whole.

Tonight was bliss. I have several pieces that I'm working on (you really have to when you paint in oils), and I worked on a few of them. Right now I'm a bit obsessed with the night and the early morning skies.  I'm enjoying having many paintings in progress with the same theme; it allows me to explore different approaches to similar images.

I listen to a lot of music while painting. My favorite cd's of the evening were Joshua Bell's Red Violin Concerto, and Dexter Gordon's Our Man in Paris and One Flight Up. Sometimes it's good to paint to music without lyrics.

Here is Dexter Gordon's Tanya. Brilliance.