Re-committing to Art

For many reasons which can be summed up as "Life is hard.", I need to spend more time doing art and less time doing... everything else. Or nothing else. Or wasting time. Or sitting bleakly staring at screens because of how emotionally draining.... no, see, that is why art needs to come back in and take more time. 

So we set up a corner of our dining room as a painting studio for me. After all, who uses a formal dining room in this day and age anymore, anyway? It has never been used for eating meals, and has mostly been our space for gaming and long-lived crafts that needed a big table. So we removed the craft table, covered some of the walls with a backdrop, adding an area rug that we don't mind getting thrashed, moved in some supplies and an easel, and we have a painting setup for me!

This also takes us one step closer to having our entire home look like crazy artists live here. Back before we moved to Wisconsin, when we sold our old house we were told by our realtor that our home has so much artwork on the walls that it looks like a museum, not a home. We considered that a compliment. We're taking it farther. Why look like a museum when you can look like an active art studio?

We've also decided that my experiment with putting my art on clothes is not going to drive whether or not we keep a Shopify store online. Whether or not people engage with that work, we still want the store to exist. We want to create things and we need a way to sell the things we make - not for the money (although that is nice), but just to keep the materials flowing through the world. If you make too many things and have nothing to do with them, you end up with storage rooms full of things you never touch or look at. We don't want that - we want our creations to get out in the world, to be appreciated and ideally bring some joy to others.

To that end - more creation, more results, more art as therapy to balance life, and hopefully even some sharing of it all with the world.