Sometimes when I paint it feels effortless and at those moments, I know that I was born to do this!
I know what I’m about to say will sound counterintuitive to a lot of my posts about how art is so meditative, relaxing and zen like. But it’s important to understand that our ability to withstand turbulence is what gets us to our destination.
So I have to admit something.
Sometimes...I wonder why I paint at all when art causes me such anxiety.
“But you make it look so easy”
Truth be told… it doesn’t always come easy to me. More often than I’d like to admit, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Only from the perspective of a finished painting or book or a bank account with lots of digits do things look easy. My secret? Keep working on all the parts that look like shit and what’s left over looks successful.
And you know what? After talking to hundreds of other artists, musicians, writers and reading biographies of some of the most successful creatives in history, I have come to the conclusion that our shared insecurity is just part of the process.
This holds true for parenting too. Most of the time, parenting is truly blissful. Chelsea and I really do have mostly magical moments with our children. All those Instagram and Facebook posts of us laughing aren’t just B.S.
But when you have a 4 year old daughter and twin boys that are almost 3, there are plenty of times that you want to cry or go hide your head under the pillow because you feel like a failure. These struggles are real with eating healthy and getting on top of our finances too.
Whatever it is that you want to achieve, do or have. It is worth it. You know it is. So just don’t give up.
Will you have moments that make you want to give up leaving you feeling like a big loser? You can bet on it. But does the good outweigh the bad? 100%!
This past week I finished not one but two big commissioned pieces. One of which took me a straight month to complete. It took a lot out of me mentally and spiritually. I had to make a lot of personal sacrifices too. I didn’t get to work out, my mail is currently piled up high on my desk and my office looks like a bomb went off. It can wait. It did.
During my painting process this past month, I had more than a few moments where I left my studio for the day, walked upstairs and my wife looked at my droopy face and knew that I didn’t get along with my paint brushes that day. But I had more moments where I felt like I just got one step closer to knowing how the universe thinks. I paint for those moments.
So what happened?
Each day, I show up and serve my calling. And I am pretty sure the results look like it was easy (it wasn’t) and I learned some things along the way too. After a while, you just sort of forget about the difficult parts. (I do at least). Until the next painting begins and the process starts all over again.
I’ll be able to share these new pieces with you in the next few months. I’m really proud of them and they’re going to both be milestones for my career and it was all worth it. No pain, no gain.
