Uncharted Waters

Uncharted Waters

Hope you are enjoying your weekend! The piece above is a new listing at MissouriBendStudio, a companion to one I shared recently titled Dead Reckoning. They both started with that graphic and ink lined background, which was originally one long narrow strip. I was trying to break out of my comfort zone and change up the format, but I seemed to go nowhere with it until I tore the piece into two equal pieces, roughly 12" x 9" and then they seemed to make themselves. 

So, now I realize it is a little bit ironic for me to write about the notion of uncharted waters the way I intended....since, in a sense, I reverted to a safer zone and an already mapped territory. I understood this piece to speak about the notion of uncharted waters in terms of daily life. The sea, for me, is a metaphor for the journey we are each traveling through life. 

Since I'm not working (at a real job), but home in the studio, I struggle to stay motivated and I struggle with the balance of making work that is meaningful to me and making work that I want to sell to bring in at least a modicum of income. Ideally, those two are not separate realities at all. Yet, sometimes I feel like I am in some sort of vacuum, insulated from the outside world. I look about the studio with the nearly 200 pieces of art listed in my Etsy shop for sale, not to mention the decades of other work that lean against the walls several pieces deep and I wonder why I need to make another piece of art to add to the piles. 

When I am there, in that low place, I remind myself of the journey....that life is what we make it, despite the way it seems that each day is much like another, merging into a blur. The metaphor of sailing on uncharted seas, allows me to see each day as unique, full of possibility and my tiny boat as a vessel for navigating new territory. Each day we must be open to discovery. In the spirit of charting new waters, I hope your day is full of new possibilities!