Time to put up...

I have little more than five months to get a bunch more work ready for my exhibition. That means the dishes will sit in the sink a little longer than usual, the floor will be covered with magazines and papers (mostly half-read, oh, wait that happens now...nevermind), and there's a chance that the plants will barely make it through the summer.

For my last solo show, I completed 21 works and we used 17 of those in the exhibition. Even though there's a relatively short time before the next one I already have 9 paintings finished that I would show, along with a number of drawings. I'm in the midst of working on two more. As before, my goal is to have enough new work so that I can choose what will be in the show and what won't.

Yesterday morning, despite feeling crappy with a stuffy head, I managed to get up to the studio and stretch three small canvases. I almost made it to the fourth, but time ran short and I had to get to my job. It's sometimes hard to be there and use that time just doing mundane tasks like stretching canvas and tearing down paper, but it has to be done. When I have a short time to accomplish those tasks, I'm usually pretty efficient with that time. What makes it difficult is when there are unfinished paintings sitting around and all I want to do is get on with completing them. I caught myself staring at the two I'm currently working on and daydreaming about what I want to do with them next. Thinking to myself, "Should I paint over that area?", "Maybe I could add something over there...", "That color doesn't seem right" and on and on... I snapped out of it, but that's how it is almost all of the time. It's particularily bad when I have to be at the job all day. My mind constantly wanders back to what I'm working on in the studio and what I need to be doing in there. Some days I just want to walk away from work and go up to the studio. There are many days when I'd be much more productive there than at work. My job isn't bad and I'm happy to have one, but sometimes, it just gets in the way of the important thing which is making art.

Now that I have the goal of the show coming up, my work-weeks in the studio will be divided into two parts: prep-work (stretching canvases, buying materials, etc...) in the begining of the week in the mornings before going to work and actual painting later in the week on my days off. This schedule will probably be kind of flexible but I'll have to set aside time for prep-work more than I do now. I'd like to have as much time for actual painting as possible when I can be in the studio longest, which is on my days off.