WORK IN PROGRESS--CONQUERING FEARS

D. in Taos
(work in progress)
Phase 1: block-in
oil on canvas

I’ve always admired and, if I’m honest, been a little jealous of people who can paint and sketch in public. Some are plein air painters, totally focused on a lake or a park or a mountain. You’ll find others in a corner of a coffee shop, capturing gestures with a quick laying-down of pencil or charcoal on paper. What makes me envious is that their available subject material is so much greater than mine. Now it isn’t that I don’t want to paint those lakes and parks and mountains, and goodness knows I love figure work. But I seem to be paralyzed by the notion that someone might watch me and, in my overworked imagination, watching equates with judgment. So I’m trapped in my studio with my photographs, well aware that the only thing that’s trapping me is me! In a hopeful attempt to at least start getting past this debilitating fear, I offer something I’ve never offered before...a work in progress. I’m tempted to make all kinds of excuses for it..explain what I know is wrong with it at this point...but all I’m going to say is that it’s in its pre-school stage of development. I intend to post a few more photos as it grows up. In the meantime, I hope that if you, like me, have some unreasonable fears that are holding you back, you’ll find a way to gently ease yourself out, past, or through them. My theory is that bringing a fear into the open will diminish it. Won’t it be neat if it works for both of us?