"Tribal"

I think I'll claim artists as my tribe.  Good and bad, sane or not, whatever the medium, we're kin.  We might be kissing cousins to some other types, but artists are my people.  We may enjoy kissing even more types than that for that matter, but you know, we can be friendly people :)  Or completely antisocial too.  We are what we are, and the world should be glad that we're in it because I think we make things more interesting.

Except I don't feel all that interesting lately.  I've been intent on cleaning, painting, rearranging my home.  This is clearly important to me, but I doubt it's very interesting to anyone else.  Let's just all rejoice that my computer is finally back in the computer room!

I'm feeling very pleased with the results.  The room is lighter and simpler than it used to be.  Things match, I've got a better chair, life is good.  Now all I have to do is quit staring out the window and watching my new neighbor landscape her yard and clean up all the messes I made in the other rooms.

The living room is messed up because I've been matting, framing, and spreading out paintings to consider what I feel like hanging up.  In the midst of all this clutter is a painting I started before tackling the computer room.  It's big and red, so it draws my attention, but I think it would catch my attention anyway.  I certainly think about it a lot when I collapse on the couch after all my nesting.

Behind the red painting you can see part of the green friends painting I made last year.  On it, I journaled all of the friends I've had in my life and grateful things I think about them.  It was a heart-opening experience for me to paint and I wanted to re-explore that idea, but to tackle the difficult people in my life.  This is far less pleasant, and maybe there's a bit of avoidance in my decision to redo the computer room?

The goal is to wade through the unpleasantness and get to the happy part where I can look at the villains in my life with gratitude too.  After all, they created "opportunities to grow" by making my life challenging.  I'm not there yet.  I want to erase them.

I find myself wanting to edit what I write because somebody will see this painting, perhaps someone I'm writing about?  I don't want to deal with the backlash of a moment like that.  It's not like when my friend Leanne came over and was pleased to see her name on my friends painting.  But, I think facing that dread is something I need to do, and beyond that, helps me keep the door closed to people who hurt me.

I wonder if I really want to hang a painting of negativity, but the negativity happened.  I carry it around with me all the time.  I'm trying to offload it onto canvas instead.  I'd like to see the finished painting as growth and success, which would be something I'd want to see on the wall, and would reinforce things I've learned.

Most of what you see here is the underpainting.  I've got plans for what goes on top of this.  If all goes well, I'll show you how it turns out.  I'm hoping for beautiful.