Artistic Hiatus

Many people believe that being an artist is easy. That you get up in the morning and paint. I hate to dispel this theory, because yes, there are days like that. But there are many that are agony, the agony of wanting to paint and not knowing what to paint and sometimes, not even wanting to. I was reading in Shirley Trevena's book, "Taking risks with Watercolour", and was happy to find that even the most accomplished artists suffer the way I do.

"Painting is not always as relaxing as it seems, especially when the flow of ideas dries up. Nobody can turn on inspiration like a tap - I wish one could. There are days when I can hardly persuade myself to go into the my studio, let alone start working......."

I suffer this more often than I care to remember. Many artists tell you that in this case just do something, because the doing in itself is inspiring. So having found myself in a dry period, I did just that. I trawled images that I have on my computer and came back to pears.

Painting these I had the idea of having the white of a table cloth with pears on and a dark wall behind them but having got to this point, I am not faced with the fear of "if I add any more it may ruin it". Remembering how I rather flew at a couple of still lifes a short while ago and ended up having to crop them to remove my rash decisions, I have decided to wait and see what inspiration will provide.