Exhibition Pressure

I’m surrounded by names like “Happy Hours,” “No Worries,” “Southern Treasures”. I’m trying to soak in all these beach house names and their pleasant themes. I’m supposed to be on vacation, relaxing and taking in the fresh smell of the salt air, not to mention the salt from the rim of my margarita glass. Nope, I’m thinking of what I should paint when I get back to the studio. With the impending show coming up, I and I think all artists, put on this self-imposed pressure to create masterpieces.

I have the most beautiful thought, a vast expanse of large, blank, freshly painted white walls of a gallery anxiously awaiting my paintings. The thought quickly turns to anxiety; how many paintings do I need? What will I paint? Should I have a theme? Does it need to be a cohesive body of work? The questions swirl in my head creating self-doubt and paralyzing my creative non-linear thought process. How can the past 15 years of painting all of a sudden be discarded as practice? With every show, not like this is my first, it is a struggle to get started. Once I realize that I’m not curing cancer, I’m not saving the world from hunger or coming up with an alternative fuel source, I can relax. Really I’m just making paintings…I’m putting my whimsical thoughts that dance in my head onto a board. I play with imagery, texture, light and color. It’s this “playing” that got me into this position in the first place; to create paintings to grace the blank white walls of the gallery.

I’ll convince myself that I have the confidence of a master and the innocence of a child to create something that someone can relate to, something that will let their own ideas swirl in their head or inspire in a way I couldn’t imagine. I’ll go back to the language of painting that I have created over the last 15 years, the skills, the things that worked, and the things that didn’t work. I’ll break my rules that I have become comfortable with while borrowing others that I find inspiring. I’m going to have fun with this. Speaking of which, I’m on vacation and I’m going to go have fun.

Cheers,

Jeff