It's been a long time since I've felt such a sense of direction and purpose to my art. The truth is that I've been feeling a little lost for maybe the last year or more.

The thing is, I know better.  I know how to do this.  I know that it's all about showing up and working.

But it's easy to forget. It's easy to imagine inspiration will strike if you just wait for it. Surely the great artists didn't have to work for it?

But of course they did. Nothing comes without work and that's all there is to it.

So I came out of my fog and I started submitting my work for group exhibitions and then when it gets accepted, and they tell me 'actually you'll have a lot more space than the 4 paintings you submitted,' then I suddenly have to start working. And the deadlines force me to come up with ideas.

And even though it's midnight, and I have to be at my desk for my real job early in the morning, I'm fired up because this mess ....

 

... this mess means that I am pursuing an idea and creating new pieces and - without blowing my own trumpet - I love them! 

 

I would buy these pieces. That's how much I love them. They are collages made from pieces of failed paintings. It has taken me weeks to find just the right pieces and cut them into just the right shapes and, even now I am not sure they are done. But what fun it was to make them!

I have many blessings. But if there is one thing I am grateful for above all else it is the gift of being an artist. I don't mean that I think I am a gifted artist ... I mean that I have been given the gift of joy. All I need is an idea, some paints, some paper, and some PVA glue and I am like a pig in shit. Time flies, worries disappear, I lose myself. 

Even if nothing I create ever means anything to someone else, that is an amazing thing to have. The fact the people sometimes want to buy what I create is an extra blessing.

PS: Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who kept a neat studio, where everything was in its place. But I will never be that person. I am this person.