While cleaning out a cluttered corner of my studio this morning, I came across an issue of Professional Artist magazine and began perusing its pages. The first article I stopped at was all about ambition. The dictionary defines the term as a strong desire to do or achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work as well as an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power. Ambitions roots can be tied to a striving politician hungering for votes and clawing for power which connotes stepping on others to achieve status or fame. It's no wonder we feel so horrid at times about our own ambitions. They don't feel associated to the creative process in which its purest forms involves opening, deepening, and letting go - not plotting your next power play. So basically, there's nothing wrong with ambition; we just need the right role model or mentor.
Yet ambition can be a positive force... the reason we push through a creative project. It can be the fuel we need to market our work and to present it out into the world - and not at the expense of others. I consider ambition to be a projects life force that moves through me... an activated desire. I have clarity about what I want and the perseverance to pursue it. I know ambition to be a powerful motivating factor to seeing my projects completion. Ambition has definitely kept me active and pursuing opportunities. I keep applying myself to new goals and stretching for things that may still be far out of my reach in the hopes of getting my art out into the world.
"What I love about ambition is that "success" is a mountain with no top. There are endless vistas along the way where we get to rest a bit and enjoy the view before trekking on to what will transform us and our work next," states the author of the article Sage Cohen.
Another article I read in the same magazine was about teaching art online. Hmmm. My inner wheels are turning. This week has alerted me to the wants and needs of various people in my community. I received a phone call from a former student of mine wanting me to teach palette knife painting, as well as possibly some other mediums, at her center of living. Over the course of this past weekend, I spent some time with my only grand-daughter who, off the cuff while I was teaching her the craft of rug hooking, said that I should be an art teacher - that I was good at teaching. I flashed back to the days almost 20 years ago when I taught art briefly in the public school system. Like many school systems today, there were far too many students in one class and I had to assign a grade to each and every art project that came across my desk. I've always felt that art shouldn't be "graded", but each work appreciated for it's merits.
Eighteen months ago, my husband Dave has procured himself a much better digital camera that also has the capability to take decent video. When I received the magazine I was currently re-reading two years ago, we did not have the skills nor the equipment to produce a quality video. Perhaps I didn't realize it then, but maybe a seed was planted. Last night, the wheels in my head started turning concepts into ideas and things were in high gear. My goal is produce at least ten videos of my paintings from beginning to completion. I will have to re-prefect my knife painting techniques as it has been quite a long time since I've used one on a daily basis. The small local class my former student inspired me on will hopefully come to fruition and that will also get my feet wet again in regards to teaching, as I have not taught a class in well over five years.
With said ideas and wheels turning in my head, I can sometimes get ungrounded. I had to dig out some of my older supplies and I had Dave go through the huge closet that's in my studio. He was about five minutes into the job when he asked me if I was sure they weren't the corner that I would eventually clean out. I didn't think so, but lo and behold, he was right. This is why I enlist his help with so many aspects of my art business - he keeps me grounded.
Happiness is discovering. In the end, after all the decluttering, I found I had all the supplies I need to begin on this ambitious adventure. Yes, I am still involved with my sketchbook project that's going to New York and that is ahead of schedule. I won't start filming these videos until March after the sketchbook project is done and off to Brooklyn. I can block out an hour or two each day or as needed. I need to practice my creative process and get used to talking about it - to myself - as I go; that's going to be the weird part.
I have to remember to take all this one day at a time. First things first. As I finished the article, I put the magazine down and raised my mug to take a sip of my now luke-warm tea. The quote on my tea bag stated the following; "If you let yourself be successful, you shall be successful." Works for me!
Until next time,
Jill
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