Thoughtful Tuesday - I'm a Painter, but I Don't Paint Like That

I didn't paint much at all this weekend, and sometimes that will happen. To make up for no Studio Monday post (I was busy baking, cleaning and errands), I decided to create Thoughtful Tuesday where I simply blog about... thoughts... related to art. Yeah........ let's go with that. *excuses*

For the longest time, I struggled with my art to the point that I felt like an failure. I even remember one studio day in college, mentally freaking out, trying to decide what I should switch my major to if it wasn't too late. Part of this is my tendency to a perfectionist nature. When you say you want to be an artist as a kid, people like to say, "Oh, you'll be the next Picasso!" When you're older, people hear you're an artist, and think you should be John Singer Sargent. Likely, this is the culture I was surrounded by - the expectation you can paint realistically or you're just putting blobs on canvas. The truth is I wanted to paint like Vermeer or Van Gogh, but fell in love with O'Keefe and Kahlo. I try to paint realistically, I'd love to do a realistic portrait someday... but it's just not me. At the end of the day and the part of the point of this blog, is to be me. I paint what I paint, I do what I do.... and slowly, I get better and better at doing what I do.