Spent three hours last night in the studio bagging up promotional materials for the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours. It went much smoother than I thought it would. I had two out of three people come by and pick up their bags of goodies (postcards, posters, brochures and balloons). One couldn't make it and she called. It's amazing what can happen when I finally get down to having myself organized. Not that I'm never organized in the studio or elsewhere in my life, it's just that I had a lot of reservations about taking on this particular task. Now that I've tackled it, it's much less intimidating.

I certainly need to spend more time reflecting on my work. Most of the time, I go to the studio and get to work almost right away and paint until I get tired. Not a bad thing, but spending time in there last night not working on any of my projects and just looking at them made me realize that I need to make that connection more often. I'm in a very different mental state when I'm busy painting. In those times, I'm more involved with the pushing around of paint and trying to make the thing 'work' as a piece of art. Even when I've stopped painting for a particular session, I'm too tired and have been too close to it to attempt to evaluate it consciously.

That's why it's important to spend some time with the work, just looking and thinking. I've neglected that aspect of the creative process to a certain degree. It has a lot to do with wanting to get ideas out of my head as fast as I can. I paint, paint, paint then stop, go home, come back again and do it all over again. This way of working leaves little time for evaluating the work properly. So, I'm going to make more time for examining what I've done. I don't want to spend too much time on that, but it is important.