A New Year Starts. I get back to my studio after a month away. Painting halted from holidays and illness. Oh how good it feels to step back into the studios warm embrace! The plants seem to have survived, not too many zombie flies to wipe off the old wooden window sills. I open the blinds of the wall of east facing windows and turn on the mass of color corrected lights so they can keep the grayness of a cold January winters day at bay. Clean up the counters, clear out the piles, and take out the trash.

Hmmmmm.

I look around trying to figure out where I left off. There are a pile of reference photos on my drawing table. New drawing supplies and sketch book patiently waiting for grand ideas. The photos have long lost their spark of inspiration. Why did I hold these back? What was it that I saw in these that caught my eye and sent that electrical current through my hands wanting to be expressed?

I look through my available shapes and sizes of boards to paint on. I scrape the dried oil paint off my glass palette. I look at the pile of photos hoping for a spark, an amber, a match, something! I get out the new pad of paper, markers and ink pens and expect brilliance at first sight.

Yeah, no.

 The color corrected lights are starting to lose their battle of keeping out the dreary winter gray on gray. I start looking for my sash of chocolate. I have lost my momentum. It is time to start again.

Whether it has been a month or a year, an illness, a holiday, a trip or after the closing of a long awaited one person show, an artist will be confronted with starting again many times in our careers. After spending my allotted time wrapped in a blanket whimpering that I will never paint again, that I have lost my edge and this must certainly be the end of my creativity (because we all know that artists and drama go together like that) I awaken to a new day. I look in my drawer for my big girl pants and put them on. I open the drapes and see the sun shining. I can do this. I sit down and write about doing this. I start to remember the ideas I had for a new series and make plans on getting the reference I need. I look at where this can take me, instead of looking it where I was. I will try to accept the past as the past, grateful for all the knowledge and skill it has brought me and try to build the courage to step into expressing myself today. To see where this starting again will take me.

As I left my studio last night I glanced at a quote I have hanging on my wall. A reminder for days like this, days when we are confronted with starting again.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometime courage is that little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” Mary Ann Radmacher

Perhaps this starting again is to remind us that we are growing. We are not who we were yesterday or who we will be tomorrow. It is time to get out of our comfort zone, allow ourselves to paint badly and see where we end up.

We can do this. But first I need to re sash my chocolate supply.