What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
-Plutarch
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I am in the very last day of preparations before delivering my show to the West End Gallery for next Friday’s opening of my show, Layers. It’s a day that mixes the tense anticipation of how the work will be received at the show with the relief of finishing all the tasks required to make it happen.
Fear and elation from moment to moment.
This is just an accepted part of the process by now. But it’s all too easy to let the fear part of this little dance grow, to imagine worst-case scenarios where the show is an abysmal flop and the work fails to move a single person on any level. I can only imagine that anyone who creates or performs has these fears. The trick is to not succumb to them, not let them drown out what you know to be true in your work.
That’s where the elation part of the process comes in. When I am framing and prepping, the work is arranged in stacks so that I can’t see much of it as I go through the process. I am engrossed in doing these tasks and put the work itself out of my mind as I proceed. But as I go along, I get to each individual piece, turning it over to reveal an image that had escaped my mind. It’s exciting, like seeing it for the first time, and I find myself appreciating aspects of the painting that I had overlooked or not even noticed when it was consuming me in its creation. It’s a moment that wipes away the fears and reinforces my own belief in the work.
That’s what happened yesterday with this piece, an 18″ by 18″ canvas painting that I call The Empowering. It had slipped from my sight and memory and upon turning it, it just seemed to glow among the other work. It really bolstered me and had me setting up pieces in my framing space so that I could see it alongside the other paintings in the show. The fears were washed away and I was left with a great sense of internal satisfaction that this group was already a success, regardless of my fears.
Here’s hoping that Plutarch’s words hold true and this inner belief becomes an outward reality.
Redtree Times 