I Am Becoming So Busy

This is what I have wanted. Now that it is here, I am nervous. It is easier to want to be busy and to think that it would answer all the questions, and that to busy would be a solution in itself. Well, I am busy and it could answer some of the questions, temporarily. Like my bills could be paid for 2 months not just one. My new secret London clients (only allowed to name them when the painting is done and presented - it's a secret gift for someone) will say Wow matey thanks, and put the painting up and I will have to find a new client. So being busy is part of the ongoing process. Being busy doesn't provide me with The Answer but it helps me along. I am nervous in case I'm not really any good and no one has had the heart to tell me yet. I am nervous in case this is the one painting I can't do. However, that has never happened.

I am off to London to meet Secret Client That Knows About The Commission to talk about the Secret Client That Does't Yet, Until It Is Presented To Him Publicly At A Fancy Do At The End Of The Month. I am also delivering the other secret Jesus on the Tube today, to the client who will give it as a present to someone.

The Open Studios went really well. I met some wonderful people - oh how I want to put them all in the studio painting. Most people come and look around and then tell me how they would love to paint. But for some reason or other, they have convinced themselves that they can't. They are so afraid to even try. They think they would't be any good that they don't have time that there is no room to do it and so on. All these people. All walking around in their lives, with all this creative talent and inspiration, untapped and unused. How many of them, I wondered, would do the most beautiful work. It is very hard to listen to your creative side but if you do, it is the most healing most awe inspiring experience. Oh oh oh. What they could do, if only they would let themselves do it. They seem to think they need to set up a studio and to produce a sleek perfect piece the first time, or it isn't worth doing. Oh goodness. How many masterpieces of any description, from any of us ordinary mortals, just flow out first time. Painting is about expression, about practice. about trying again and again to get the right result, and sometimes you don't even know what the right result is. It defies words, you just have to keep at it till you get somewhere. I told some of my guests that I find painting very difficult indeed. Which I do, but experience tells me now that I can do it and that it is only difficult for a while. When it suddenly turns, and I pass throught the brick wall, I love it. But it is never easy.

Hope my lovely visitors this weekend have good days today. I hope they trust themselves and do a bit of art.