The Naturalist Fine Art

Today I struggled. I was berating myself, feeling like I was not capable of producing the level of art I have before. Then I thought: “wait now, remember how you made this one? You studied a picture so intensely, comparing the color of the sunset gradient pixel by pixel, and spent weeks reworking the colors until it matched the picture seamlessly. You went at it like an academic.”

I thought these things, and then I felt helpless to summon the urge to study like that. Like I was done for as an artist- dried up, unmotivated, useless. Then a voice of my past self reminded me to carry on– “must keep creating”– so I pushed myself over the artistic ledge and created. Right there on the page. I did use my prior method of color-compare and brought up two pictures to work from, using a sunset captured by my mother the photographer in two moments that I conjoined into one scene.

A wise mentor once said, “It doesn’t matter which direction you go, just take the first step.”

And so I stepped over the bucket of self-doubt, stumbled, and kept stepping until I found this piece suddenly before me, a sudden treasure of creative candy that my eyes delighted upon. My heart soared. “I’ve still got it in me. I’m still an artist. The juice still works, just gotta shake it up a little, every now&then.”