A thought on art....

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
- Scott Adams

Yesterday, my brother and I took the day off and went to the fair. I went with my sister last year but she wasn't able to make it this year, thus necessitating I convince my brother to go with me. If we'd had the time I'm sure he would have insisted that we bike there as he is generally pretty opposed to using cars to get places. But the trip is about 200 miles and three hours by car and not exactly feasible to make it up and back in one day on bike. But to give him credit, my brother agreed and we had a pretty good time, even though he wouldn't let me get an elephant ear (my splurge treat) of my own and made me share one with him. (My sister has a different approach to fair food: as soon as we got to the fair last year she said, "Ok, we need to get elephant ears, caramel apples, and cotton candy.")

Most people tend to go to the fair to ride the rides and spend hundreds of dollars to win stuffed animals that just got unloaded off the ship from China that morning and probably cost about 50 cents to make. Our family, on the other hand, spends most of our time looking at the animals and the various 4-H and art exhibits. And it was the art exhibits, both professional and high school (some of the high school art was good), that have sparked my guilt. These kids are at least ten years younger than me and they're doing some really nice work. I really need to spend more time working on art. I usually just draw or work with acrylic paint but I also want to work on watercolor, lithograph, block printing and collography (just as soon as I figure out what exactly collography is.)

So, a mid September resolution of sorts: to work on practicing art more often. The two things that usually stop me are laziness and fear of the result not being as good as I had pictured it in my head. But maybe this time it'll be different and I'll actually follow through with this resolution. Hey, just last week I finished the quilt that I'd been working on for several years and had resolved to finish this year, so there's always a chance.