Wrapping up, moving on

I’m very pleased: the proposal for a four-person show that I submitted to a local non-profit exhibition space has been accepted, and we have been offered a slot this fall. It is a lovely space, and I know our work together there is going to look GREAT.

As this opportunity has come through, I am wrapping up a number of exhibit and grant applications that include my latest “Autumn” series, pictured in the last blog entry.

I’m completing the final steps: printing out the application letters and artist statements that I have worked so hard on, and printing out images of the paintings I have worked so hard on. It occurs to me now that the labor has been finished; now there’s only one more ingredient that’s needed in the process, and that’s for the decision-makers to like my work.

And that is the one thing that you can’t MAKE happen. You can paint the best paintings you know how (in my opinion, this means the most honestly reflective of your experience and what you mean to say). You can have the work photographed as well as possible. You can write about the work as succinctly as possible. You can follow the application guidelines as carefully as possible. But at some point, you have to let your efforts go, send them out into the world, and allow the process to continue in someone else’s hands.

It’s a relief, in a way, to know that you’ve done all you can, and the rest is up to … whatever you want to call it: God, Fate, or good old-fashioned Luck.

We’ll have to wait and see! As for now I’ll be turning my attention to the new blank canvases waiting for me in the studio. I have a summer full of painting planned, and I’m very excited about that too.