Redtree Times

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.       

– Samuel Johnson

Running this post below from back in 2009 because I am working on a new painting and am eager to get at it. It’s one of those piece where the first few forms painted set it off perfectly and it begins to come to life immediately. These kind of pieces are sometimes both the easiest to paint and the hardest because there is always a fear that I will somehow make it go bad and lose all that beautiful potential, all the life that is already coming through. But every day in the studio is not filled with enthusiasm like this. It is often hard and I am filled with doubts most days. It seems like I have been waiting for the last twenty years, long before the post below, for the next shoe to drop and my career to evaporate before my eyes. But I keep on keeping on despite that and that’s the theme here. – March 2021

I’ve been thinking about determination a lot lately. There are times when nothing seems to come easily and it seems like there are any number of things that would be more enjoyable than struggling forward with your chosen endeavor.

But in the end you force yourself ahead. There’s a greater satisfaction in struggling with that which you have chosen and feel is meaningful than in doing something that means little to your inner self even though it is easier and, in many cases, more entertaining.

This is something I keep in mind when I’m in the studio. There are many days when nothing comes easily, every stroke is like lifting a heavy weight and inspiration seems to have left the building long ago. In these moments self doubts begin to stir and I seriously wonder if I have reached an end to my creative life. It’s like a dull pain that seems like will be with me forever and there are points I want to stop.

But I remember that this is the path that I chose to follow.

With that recognition I am reminded of other times when I have been at this point before and I know, I just know, that if I steel my mind and force myself to move ahead, one small step in front of another, that I will come to a point where all this forced energy builds and builds and suddenly breaks free.

In this moment of release, everything suddenly seems effortless and inspiration is everywhere. It’s like going from the dark depths of a stifling mine to the top of a cool mountain. And the memory of the toil that it has taken to reach this point fades into the distance.

Until the next time.

And that’s where determination is needed once more.