audrey posted on 24 October, 2012 18:36

I read this article and it made me cry (thanks for that Gary Peters)
I had spent the entire day phaffing around not doing much butbeing busy the whole day; paying bills, catching up on emails, facebook, fillingthe bird feeders, pulling weeds, many cups of tea... you get the picture.
Mainly I have spent the day avoiding the studio. The fun has gone out of it. I am sick of it, sick of battling against it. I am sick of trying to figure it out and the ever-present feeling that somehow I have to come up with a way that all this making will generate an income, (and not just any old income – but one at least equal to that which I used to generate in corporate).
All this fretting and anxiety does is choke me, take awaythe joy and leaving me feeling like I want to slash the canvas rather thanpaint it.
The thing is I do I have a calling – I just want to / need tomake stuff. My earliest memories are of making things. And contrary to Peters’article it isn’t always a nice place to be. Having a calling doesn’t mean Iwant it to be that way, doesn’t mean it fits with my idea of how my life shouldbe. The problem is I can mad if I don’t paint – even if that means I have to wear second hand clothes, schmooze gallerists I don’t always relate to and participate in an industry that isn’t renowned for its integrity.
I miss the pure joy and freedom of making when I wasn’t trying to make it be my living - when I just used to ‘muck around’ with it.
Maybe I need to do like the author of this article did andjust pack it in for a bit – let it lie and in the process get back to just making for the fun of it.