It's Time to Click My Heels - January 4, 2020

Josie Lewis had an interesting post on Instagram today:

The main thing I have learned in the last decade is that I do not know very much stuff. The older I get, the more vast the gap [in] my knowledge appears. And the other thing I am realizing is that I have a very limited capacity for imagination. And this is speaking as a big dreamer...

So I'm learning I have little control and childish, limited imagination. But that doesn't mean I don't exercise my dreaming muscles. I've also learned that all the really good things in my life are developed over time and I need to put in the hours towards the things that fulfill and excite me. 

As the saying goes, "When the muse comes, she better find me working."

This is actually blue, not green. 

I have a very limited capacity for imagination

Let me say this again: I have a very limited capacity for imagination. This is why I keep remembering someone saying to me: "I can't figure out what to draw on my own, but I can copy anything." This is also what I keep doing when I take classes or look at Instagram posts or watch videos of artists. I'm looking for something I can use in my own art.

This is okay to do!

Here's how I think of it: I cannot build a house, but I can decorate a house. Maybe I can even knock out a wall and put in a doorway. I can paint or landscape or put solar panels on it or get it stuccoed. But I didn't build the house and NO ONE CARES. They care how the house looks after I've done my thing to it.

In other words, I can stop spinning my wheels, trying to find my art voice - I already have it. I've been looking for something original to come out of me, like Danielle Donaldson or Susan Branch or Sara Midda or whoever else I admire at the moment.

Isn't it funny how simple things distract us? All these years I've been looking in the wrong direction. Like Dorothy, I already had the way home. I've got the shoes and it's time to click my heels.