Change

"Stories." Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches. ©2012 Karine M. Swenson

This new painting is fresh off the easel. It was started even before the trip to Germany, and has undergone so many changes. I have been documenting different stages of each painting with my camera. I find that in order for a painting to improve, I have to let go of things that I may have gotten too attached to. It is so interesting how art parallels life. We get attached to comfortable things, and we fear change. Even change that is good for us! But in order to move forward in life and paint, we have to be willing to let go. That is what I am learning to do with my painting (and hopefully, my life.) If I photograph the stages of the painting, I find that it is easier, somehow, to move forward. That way, whatever I may have been attached to in the painting will be preserved as a digital image. What I am discovering, surprisingly enough, is that the things I thought were so good, so worthy of saving, really weren't as good as what came next. Now is that a valuable lesson, or WHAT?! All I have to do is figure out how to "photograph" or document the things in life I think are worth saving, so that I can let go of them. Maybe that's what painting (or art) is, ultimately. A way to document how we are at any given time in our lives. What do you think, fellow artists and painters?

"Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us. Difficult as it is to remember, it is our work that creates the market, not the market that creates our work."

                                                                                                                ~Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way