Fallow

It seems like a nat­ural cycle for artists to go through peri­ods in which cre­ative pro­duc­tion is lim­ited. That seems to be hap­pen­ing to me right now. Over the last few weeks, I’ve allowed the pres­sures of job, father­hood, mar­riage, friends, and other aspects of life to push art from daily prac­tice to some­thing that per­co­lates in the back of my head. I’ve been stay­ing away from inter­net art forums, stay­ing out of art stores, and gen­er­ally act­ing like some­one who doesn’t paint any­more. As a result, my most­ing rate here has decreased. I have not picked up a paint brush in four weeks. It’s not that I don’t think about art, but it never seems like the right time to start again.

At one level, I’m com­fort­able with this. I know I’ll get back to paint­ing, and I know it will be sooner rather than later. Paint­ing is too impor­tant to me to allow it to become some­thing I used to do. Right now, it seems OK to take a break, take stock, think about what I want to be pro­duc­ing, and let the back of my cre­ative mind work out what­ever it is it’s doing right now. That doesn’t seem pro­fes­sional, but for­tu­nately I don’t depend on art to pay the mort­gage. That gives me the lux­ury to be able to take an extended break from time to time.

On the other hand, I’m kind of anx­ious to get started again. Any reg­u­lar activ­ity con­tains its own momen­tum. The more you exer­cise, the eas­ier it is to exer­cise more. The more you paint, the eas­ier it is to bring your­self to paint again. Right now, there’s an iner­tia that makes it eas­ier to hang out with my wife and play with my baby son than it is to make din­ner, take out the trash, arrange with Kirsten to watch Bren­dan for a cou­ple of hours, and go paint. Once I do that again for the first time, even if the paint­ing part is clumsy and frus­trat­ing (as it prob­a­bly will be as I get back into prac­tice), it will be eas­ier to get back into the habit. And that’s what I need to do, and soon.