So Many Options, So Little Time

The truth is there are so many things that need doing there just isn’t enough time to do them.

So how do you decide? What are you willing to spend your time on and what will you give a pass?

There’s nothing wrong with devoting all of your energy to what you are good at. That’s probably how you got good in the first place. Seeing things a certain way is what makes an artists an artist instead of just a looker.

You like what you like when you like it. Again, that’s probably why you got good in the first place. I love the birds that Ms Kelle captures, Ms Kim paints so beautifully and the Dimmocks do so very well. But there is no way I am getting out of my warn little bed at two AM, wrapping up like I was planning to cross the Antarctic and heading out into a frozen marsh to sit freezing my…more information that you wanted, to sit waiting for that golden moment when Nature tells the birds it is time to get up and get about the business of being birds. No way. Probably why I am not a birder.

I have to admit that I am also not a landscape guy. Oh the country around here is wonderful and the seascapes and skyscapes and streams and plants and bushes are fantastic. Remember I come from Texas where we dig up stuff like that to put up skyscrapers. No there are no cattle, no oil, no cowpunchers where I come from. Dallas is all about business and if it don’t make green, and I am not talking environmentally friendly, they just don’t give a rat’s.

Boats are pretty scares around Big D too. We have a lake or two where the genteel rich play with their sailboats but nothing like the Pacific. Yes, there is a large body of water along the Texas coast, but that’s three hundred and seventy-five miles from Dallas. You talk surfing it’s about the slow Internet connection.

We do have cars and bikes and planes and if you can spot them as they fly by you are a pretty good EYE and should be lining up a sports job. I’ve seen more classic cars since I moved here, mostly because they sit still.

So where is all of this leading? It is leading to this, you have to take a step back and open up your horizons. What was good enough for yesterday just isn’t good enough for tomorrow. You think all those blacksmiths around the turn of the last century thought they’d be out of work before the end of the first decade of the new century? No they didn’t and they went right on doing what they’d always done. And you know how many of them are still working at their trade.

When an opportunity comes along are you going to take it?

We are so lucky here on the South Coast. It seems like every week one of the talented and active artists in our community comes up with a new and different challenge to get the creative juices flowing. Ava Richey masterminds the Artists and Writers Exchange; Victoria Tierney runs the Hospital shows and comes up with some pretty imaginative ideas, the Bright and the Bold right now and later The Digital Eye. Yeah, it’s a pity the hospital won’t take nudes but there are rules for everything. Don’t let that keep you from taking the figure study class in Gold Beach or joining the Monday Plein Air guys in Port Orford. (Why is it we, the largest city on the South Coast don’t have figure study class of our own? Can artists be too timid to paint a nude figure? Have the prudes and the prigs run off all of the real artists?) And what about S L Donaldson’s 30 Parks by 30 Artists?

Don’t tell me you haven’t signed up for that challenge? Trees and shrubs don’t move, rivers and lakes don’t sue. Me, I like people. In Dallas you take out a camera that’s even an advanced Point and Shoot and you have two hundred twenty-year old blondes lining up to let you take their picture and they won’t scream for a model release or blush if you tell them it’s a nude shoot. Here, people are more conservative and there are more spouses and boyfriends to object to even a little sunset on the Boardwalk portrait shoot, better make sure you have a signed release.

But just because it is more difficult shouldn’t make you shy away from the challenge. That’s what makes bumps grown on your brain. Sure be really, really good at what you do, but don’t pass up a change to cultivate those bumps!