Coffee And Paint Drips Blog - Page 12 of 79

Resistance Recruits Allies

“Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. but there’s a parallel peril that must also be guarded against: sabotage by others.” ~Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Overcoming resistance is one of the hardest things an artist can do to preserve some creative sanity. I am well aware of all of that.

The interesting thing Pressfield suggests in this chapter is that resistance can come from the people around us. He writes here that when an artist gets the ball rolling, all systems are go and working, the people close to her become “moody or sullen.” This is a strange phenomenon. Family members, spouses can remark that the artist has become a different person. The closer the connection, the more bizarre their reactions and emotions.

This is sabotage from the outside.

It’s bad enough we have our own ways of stopping the creativity in it’s tracks, now we have to watch out for our loved ones’ barbs. Yikes!

Keeping our artist-selves out of that mire can be so debilitating, we may as well just stay there, stuck. The only thing we can do, says Pressfield, is to keep moving.

Next up: The Symptoms of Resistance. This should be fun.

Thought for Thursday

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ”~Coco Chanel

Thought for Thursday

“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”~Lucille Ball, comedian

Armenian Genocide of April 24, 1915

As today marks the 98th anniversary of the largest massacre of Christian Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish government in Turkey, I decided to leave the latest finished watercolor painting for another day.

It is a sad story, one that some survivors refused to talk about, and yet others allowed their sadness spill out.

Confiscated arms, loss of income, loss of religious freedom, leading to deportations, marches through the desert, men and boys rounded up never to be seen again, rapes of women young and old. Children separated from families and sent to become servants in Muslim homes, (homes confiscated from Armenians),renounce their Christianity, their names, their Armenian identity.

Sounds eerily familiar in the world today.

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”~Adolf Hitler, 1939

Quite a few years ago the venerable television news anchorman, Peter Jennings, did a segment on the Armenian Genocide.

Armenian Genocide, World News with Peter Jennings

Also, more recently, I found the following video of a talk on the Armenian Genocide by Prof. Ugur Ungor on books: The Making of Modern Turkey, and Confiscation and Destruction: Genocide and the Confiscation of Armenian Property.

from Armenian-Turkish Dialogue for Peace

There are questions that have no answers. Why, is the hardest question to pose because the responsible party refuses to acknowledge these events took place as the survivors remember.

Ethnic map of Asia Minor and Caucasus in 1914-Armenian population in blue ©Wikimedia

Resistance: Don’t Open That Bag of Wind

“Resistance is most powerful at the finish line.”
~Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

This particular chapter kicked me in the gut stronger than some of the others for the sheer truth of this statement. It’s a long one so I will summarize some of it.

If you can recall the ancient Greek story of the Odyssey, with the main character, Odysseus, traveling around the world for ten years trying to get back home to his wife and family. Every time he set out for home after some wild escapade, he ran into another adventure.

“Odysseus was almost home years before his actual homecoming. Ithaca was in sight, close enough that the sailors could see the smoke of their families’ fires on shore,” writes Pressfield.

@2011DST

What does Odysseus do? He takes a “snooze,” long enough for his men to lose it. They grab his sack, that they believed contained gold. But when they cut it open, they let loose the Winds, which were bottled up for him by King Aeolus.

These gale force winds were unleashed, sending the ships back across the oceans they had fought so hard to travel, causing Odysseus further trials before he finally reached home.

“The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got.

The professional must be alert for this counterattack. Be wary at the end. Don’t open that bag of wind.”

Moved the Blog Here in One Piece, Hurray!

Having agonized over moving the old blog to this new platform for such a long time, I finally did it today. It’s Saturday, I had the time, since I don’t sleep well any more and I’m awake at 5:00AM. A wise person online said that if you want to learn how to do something go on Google and/or YouTube. How amazingly right they were! That’s what I did, except I talked to people on Twitter and Facebook, too. All great information and direction from helpful individuals.

Every post, comment, and image moved over here with ease. It was so simple I’m ashamed at how awkward and apprehensive I was about actually doing the move. Computers are scary pieces of equipment. It’s not enough there’s so much to learn, it has to give me a heart attack while it does it’s thing.

With that said, I want to welcome my old Blogger pals to WordPress and hope the adventure here will be enjoyable for all of us. As I said back at the old blog, the scenic route is usually the prettiest. And yes, the coffee is still hot here, too.

Thought for Thursday

“No one looks at a flower garden and tears their hair out trying to figure out what it means.”
~Jackson Pollock

Is Procrastination Resistance? Uh, Yeah

Sorting out the hows and whys of dodging Mr. Resistance has become a full time job. I wish I could say painting is my full time job, but that’d be a stretch considering I spend plenty of time resisting it.

Weird, right? But so it is.

Surfing the idiot net today in search of inspiration, and using that excuse, I found this wonderful cartoon on the Hyperallergic.com site titled Is Procrastination Productive? Funny how my daily schedule is just like this cartoon, art vs anything other than art. It’s ridiculous, but it’s the truth in it that makes this hilarious.

Guess it’s not just me? Heh heh.

Productive Procrastination by Lauren Purje — It’s not like you’re doing nothing.

Thought for Thursday

“If I didn’t start painting, I would have raised chickens.”~Grandma Moses, artist

Tuesday, The War of Art, and Wow

Yes, wow and The War of Art in the same sentence! I know you will want to know why and I’m about to explain. As you’ve noticed, I’ve been re-reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, to get my mojo back in action. It’s not an easy thing to push aside resistance and overwhelm. It’s the bane of an artist’s life. Mr. Resistance drops by with Mrs. Overwhelm and they end up having a party at my place without my permission. They’re lousy house guests, too, leaving all manner of distress in my house.

My quest for artistic sanity began quite a while ago when I decided I needed to purchase and work with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Breaking through artist block with various tasks was a welcome relief to the drudgery that comes with the fear of making a mess of a lovely, perfectly white canvas.

Read it, did it, passed the test. I hummed along quite well, for a while, working on my paintings in small segments of time, mostly twenty minutes. Worked well until it happened one day that it didn’t work.

What are you going to do? It happens.

In comes another great book, The War of Art. The kick butt writing style of Steven Pressfield and how he over comes resistance helped me get back on the horse, so to speak. All good. Until it happened again. Dead stop.

I don’t know how that works, but it works really well to stop me from getting anything worthwhile done. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Pain-in-my-neck show up and it’s over. But lately, they don’t stay as long as they had in the past. With my copy of Pressfield’s book close by, and writing about it here, I’m back.

So for the Wow part: Here I am, writing my little blog, working hard on developing this new platform, discussing my displeasure with Mr. Resistance when I received an email to my brand, spanking new dot com email address. I didn’t think it even worked. Mr. Pressfield’s literary representative contacted me saying she read my blogpost about his book, and would I like a few copies of it along with two others he wrote.

Would I? I was doing back flips! Yes I would, and thank you so very much! They arrived last week. I was so excited I couldn’t even think straight to start reading.

I need to breathe.

I’ve decided to have a little fun with my lovely gifts by spreading the love, the words, and wonderful direction these books can bring artists of all stripes. First I have to figure out the what and the how of the idea in my head. And if WordPress acts nicely and cooperates, we can enjoy a little contest of sorts.

Stay tuned.