I was struck this morning by this comment on Facebook made by fabulous artist Trine Bumiller:

“The trick to skiing trees is to look at the spaces in between and not the trees, a good way to go through life, ignoring the obstacles and focusing on the way clear.

Wow.  That is not only a beautiful way to look at things but this is a profound statement.   We all need to focus on the way forward.  

As with all profound messages, this one can be quite difficult to do.  How many times have we seen only obstacles?  How many times have we been crushed and immobilized by “failure”, setbacks and the difficulty in getting back up on that horse after a fall?  

For us artists, is there anything more frightening than a blank canvas?  Aren't we always terrified that our next piece of art will be nowhere close to as good as the last?

Worse yet, from a marketing perspective, how many times have we said or thought “I’m not good enough”, “my art isn’t good enough”, “there is too much competition", “I’ll never make a living at art”, and other similar statements?  Obstacles and fear of failure tend to freeze us in place like a rabbit in the forest until we are simply unable to move forward or back.

If you’ve been focusing on the obstacles, you MUST change your paradigm.  The burning question is: How? 

I recommend the Louise Hay approach.  Louise, who is one of the gurus of the spiritual/self help movement, is a big fan of mantras, which is simply a saying that you repeat over and over.  Some of my mantras are:

            I create beauty.

    I prolifically create beautiful art that people love to buy.

            I am guided to the best ways and places to sell my art.

All of these mantras focus on the positive, not on the obstacles. 

Don’t be immobilized.  Focus on the spaces between the trees.

I just returned from nine (yes, 9) weeks in Southeast Asia.  It was a fascinating trip.  We visited Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Bali.  Whew!  Five languages, five currencies, five foods, multiple hotels, multiple restaurants and multiple amazing sights.  

In all of five countries there are TONS of stupas, temples and pagodas (hereinafter collectively referred to as temples).  What was stunning was not only the proliferation of temples (temples are literally everywhere in all 5 countries) but the profusion of gold, both gold paint and gold leaf.  Never have I seen so much gold.  Literally, gold temples were everywhere.  These folks never saw a can of gold paint that they didn't buy and use.  And the poorest of people were applying little squares of gold leaf to statutes of the Buddha and in Myanmar, to the Golden Rock, a giant gold leaf covered rock on the top of a mountain which is balanced there on three hairs of the Buddha.  

The use of gold is extensive and prolific.  For example, in Mandalay, our hotel room was on the second floor.  As we looked out over the city, we could see the tops of gold temples sticking up above the trees and houses.  There were about 18 gold topped temples that we could see just from our hotel room.  Amazing.

I returned home (Yea!  Home cooked meals!  A language that I speak!  Writing that I can read!  Yes Dorothy, there really is no place like home) with a desire to incorporate gold into my resin art.  So I did some experiments on panel.  Here is a picture of one of my experiments.  

You'll be seeing gold in my work shortly.  I'm experimenting with gold paint, gold leaf, flakes of gold, gold with ink on top, and anything else that floats my gold boat.  

Ah, the joys of travel!  Fresh inspiration is undoubtedly one of those joys.