It's Friday!

And time for another Friday Art Challenge. I must confess, I'm burning out on this. I've allowed my life to become very busy again. This is a recurring theme for me. And honestly,
I'm really struggling to keep my drive to create alive! I'm just really not sure what things will look like going forward. Am I retiring? Has taking care of dad derailed me? Ah, thoughts for another time perhaps.

I did not do a physical painting for this challenge. Let me tell you what I did: I thought about it in great detail, but never laid a brush to paper!! This, too, is a theme these days! In my head I painted and did drawings to a lot of music. Some of it was really good! (it isn't always good even in my head-go figure!) But let me tell you about the most memorable.

I watched a documentary the other night about Janis Joplin. Not because I was ever a huge fan, but because I'm tired of the olympics and there was nothing on the 400 cable channels (which in itself is a whole post-remind me!) that piqued my interest. The documentary was good and when it was over, again I was moved that yet another artist had-for whatever reason or under whatever circumstance-succumbed to addiction ending in death by drugs.  Being artists we understand that we feel with mor intensity. And that it's painful to feel that deeply. The highs are higher than others and that carries us quite a way, until the low's take us down the rabbit hole.

But I digress. Listening to the words to long forgotten (by me anyway) toons, Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart conjured up an painting in my head. Picture this-, in loose watery color, half a heart surrounded in a watery blue, slightly off center, dripping itself into another heart shaped puddle below and slightly to the other side. Do you see it? Not rocket science, and not the stuff galleries are full of, but words made visual.

I do this constantly. Something inspires me to create a painting in my head. I think color, technique, execution and finished painting. Sometimes I make it happen, most often I don't. But does that make it any less creative? Am I creating any less because it's not tangible?

I'm not sure. I tend to think that the measure of creativity is the volume of work. And if I did every painting I've done in my head I would need a warehouse to store them!! They are not all good, just like those in real time, but the good ones don't really ever go away. They kind of haunt me until I make them real. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But the ones that are very persistent, are usually pretty good!

I know that wasn't what you were expecting for my offering to last week's challenge. As I said, I'm burning out!! Not sure why. But for those of you who are not-and I'll try to do it with you here-the challenge is to do a work that's been in your head. Haunting you. You know you have one! If it's big, just start it and share that with the group. I think it's all about starting. Finishing is my problem!!

No really, I wrote this because we all know creativity starts in our minds. This world is such a fertile wonderland of inspiration and our minds are limitless in their potential! Go make some art!