As in life, so also in my creative endeavors, it’s been a lifelong pattern to please everyone else first. Believe me when I say, I’m am no martyr to motherhood, I am not Martha Stewart and I stop and smell every excuse for a rose. The point is, as mama to a small herd and missus to a community involved man, I’ve become accustomed to filling the bill. Perhaps it would carry little joy for some but, surprisingly, it has always been purposeful and pleasurable to be  fulfilling expectations and needs of the gang, their team mates, their classmates, their teachers, colleagues, parishioners, ( best friend’s boyfriend’s mother’s hairdresser, twice removed?)

The creative process needs freedom to flow and rise out of the mist of imagination. Yes, I know that sounds fluffy and ethereal. More concretely put, the same old same old is not what grabs you at the gallery. The eye and the heart are drawn to something new or striking or emotive.

Another mistake I’ve made is to put perception and price in my thought process. I need to learn to please myself, I need to fling paint and not care what it costs, splash willy-nilly on big pieces of paper and if it’s a flop put it in the blender for papier mache.

It’s funny, I criticise 80% of what I paint and curse the other 20 but the proverbial eye of many beholders accept, admire and applaud. In saying that, you can already see I’ll need help climbing out of the rut that places “self worth” outside of self. When folks generously offer the advice “Suit yourself,” they don’t realize i need the “Living for Yourself Guide for Dummies” that goes with it.