So Close To Home

I have a confession to make.

I've worked on four, count em, four paintings today and I hate them all.

I've another canvas (only prepped with background color) sitting in the corner behind me and I hate it too.

But this happens.

I hate every single one of my paintings before they're finished. I'm not quite sure exactly why that is, but I do.

I don't mean a general dislike, either. I mean a sense of 'oh my god no one has ever painted anything uglier than this in the history of paint why do I bother' and I want to destroy them in various ways. My family has hidden paintings from me in the past (that I've yet to find...that spacescape is around here somewhere...)

The only way I ever don't pretend to think of using to destroy my work is fire- because I've set my clothing on fire once, on the stove, by accident while I was almost completely blind and I would like very much never to repeat the experience.

Well, that one and the one where I almost set the kitchen on fire by catching the paper towel roll when it was too close to the flame on the stove and I couldn't see it (depth perception issue). Needless to say I am not the girl you ever want to ask to light your smoke. Moving along.

When I'm at the point of hating a painting I need to do either one of two things- stop for awhile and go back to it later, or finish it straight away without stopping to think then not looking at it for a month at least. Today I have no choice but to wait a bit because they're layered with background colors, sky and clouds, and must dry before I can add in the rest.

So I decided, I should write a blog post. Hopefully I won't still hate them so much when it's over.

This post isn't supposed to be about my inferiority complex as an artist (I always say 'other people's stuff looks like stuff. Mine does not look like stuff' meaning the stuff it's supposed to be.) I think I compare myself to more talented artists the way a lot of writers (myself included) compare their work to other writers. So I keep telling myself it the writing bit is counterproductive (which it is) than so is the comparing the art bit. My art is what it is, a bit of me, such as I am.

Today's post is about the experience I know you've all had- even if you've never told anyone- where you saw something on TV or at the movies that hit so close to a raw nerve in you- felt so familiar and so desperately personal that you couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and most of all couldn't forget.

That happened to me last night.

I saw something that was so deeply personal played out on the screen right before me- the emotions exactly if not the exact circumstances, that all day I've felt short of breath. Every time I remember it I feel like I've been kicked in the solar plexus.

I can't explain to you what it is, because I can't talk about what it represents. But I can't just keep it inside either- all that shattering, panicked, aching emotion of feeling that the writer of the scene had exposed me- and my cheeks still burn from the shock of it.

I wonder about my writer friends, and I wonder what scene it is that has done this to them.

I know there is one. There always is.

I don't expect you to talk about it any more than I can talk about mine. I just wanted to say I understand why you can't.

After all, if you can't not talk about your deepest feelings with your friends, who can you not talk about them with? (and yes I know what I did there, grammar wise, apologies. That's how I'd say it if I was speaking, so that's how I typed it. It is a point I'm trying to make, which I hope you get but if you're hung up on the grammar than you probably won't anyway.)

Thank you for being people I can not talk about things with.

It helps.

Have a safe and happy weekend, everybody. I may stop in here if the mood strikes.

xoxo
bru

PS Thank you to my new followers- have followed back as best I can. That goes for Twitter folk too if I somehow missed thanking you there. Most appreciated.