Studio catching up and clean up

My daughter is recovering from knee surgery. She injured it last month when soccer season started at school. We took her over yesterday morning and the procedure was done to fix her torn ACL. Having your 15 year old go into surgery isn't just scary for the teenager, it's scary for the mom, too. Because of her surgery, we are home this weekend instead of normally out and about on weekends. This has been a good time to catch up on reading those emails, blogs, magazines and other paperwork and "to do" stuff.

I read a really good article about studio lighting in The Artist Magazine October 2010. The November 2010 issue, which I already received, had a great article about winter painting and what gear to wear to keep warm. I FB'd a friend to ask about pastels in the winter because I don't really want to buy oils just to paint in the cold, so it would be nice to know what other pastelists are doing to paint in the winter.

I actually had time to chat in Facebook. I found out via FB that a friend that I lost touch with had passed away. I was very upset about that for two reasons, that I won't be able to talk to her anymore and that no one told me she was even sick and she had passed away.

Studio Clean up and paperwork is no fun but it is part of the business side of being an artist and it's better to be organized so that things don't slip through the cracks. Some paperwork I was able to toss out, others became reminders in my calendar. This is Autumn and Halloween time so paintings need to be done that reflect the season. And Halloween paintings are always fun to paint. So, with all the paperwork and self inflicted required reading out of the way, I can get my mind focused on some fun Halloween paintings...I'm thinking pumpkins this year. So cleaning up also gave me time to think of new projects.

The whole process of cleansing, even if it's your personal space, also helps cleanse the mind of clutter and gives you time to birth new ideas. I read on The Painters Keys latest post about preventing choking in your career, no matter whether your career is professional sports or something else... the way to break the "choke," researchers are finding, is to sing.....so it's cleansing to clear the mind and singing to focus it and bring it back to what it's been trained to do.....hmmm, didn't Disney have something about whistling while you work? Interesting.