Are you there Art? It's me, Steven.

For some time now, I've been thinking of starting a blog to document my art, my process, and my life as an artist.  Who knows, perhaps my readers will learn a thing or two.  Or if I'm lucky, perhaps I will learn a thing or two or three.  

January 1st was a big and exciting day for me because I had to install my first solo show!! (Can you hear the excitement in my voice? And Happy New Year!)

My beginning experience of installing the show was a bit disturbing because I noticed my emotions were raw and conflicted.  Once I got everything unpacked and my paintings were on the floor. Negative thoughts started flowing through my head.  

My first thought:

"I have too much wall space, I don't have enough good work to put up.' 

then led to; 

"This is going to be horrible!  My work is not good enough to have a solo show!" 

and finally;

"WHY AM I DOING THIS??".  

I wrote to a friend about my earlier experience and she said what I experienced was a "loss of confidence, another form of stage fright". She also stated that "The more you do these shows the less that voice will show up".  Another friend wrote "One of my art teachers told me that every artist goes through this. There is a period during which you hate/feel inadequate/can't see your way forward. Then it resolves". 

Amazing how negative thoughts can consume us so easily.  A friendly reminder to myself and everyone that any negative thoughts we experience in our present moment are not actually facts. And it's a good reminder to be mindful and take control of the situation. 

As time moves on and with a help of our lovely gallery director, Hilary Tait Norod, we did some major editing by adding, subtracting, and moving paintings around.  In conclusion, I'm happy how the exhibition turned out and all of my negative thoughts I had earlier completely demolished.  In fact, I'm pretty excited about opening night. 

Here are some photos. 

I hope you enjoyed my first blog.  For my next blog, I want to focus more on behind the scene of art-making.  I will continue to work on the Ukiyo series; however, I think it's time to explore a new concept.  From this day forward, I will document any new ideas and process and I'm happy to share them with you.

Until next time....