YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

Growing up I was inundated with the idea of what you need vs. what you want. (Do I want that triple scoop ice cream sunday, or do I need it? Need. Definitely need.) Figuring out what you want instead of what you need is an aspect of living within your means. I've mostly carried that idea with me wherever I go, but the ideas of wants and needs and means never really affected my art life. Until... the baby. Before my Babe was born, I was going to be a stay-at-home, work-at-home mom. I was going to give myself two months of maternity leave and then get back into work.

My very first sketch of Babe.

I'm pretty good at living within my means and knowing my limitations, but the reality of my personal mom-hood is that I'm coming up short on most things. It started with a rough c-section recovery where I was bed-ridden for a big chunk of time. All I wanted to do was get back to work, but I couldn't. The pain was too intense, and I had a new little someone that needed me. I wanted to work, I needed to express the intense pain and intense love I was experiencing, but my means were limited in the harshest way. What came out of that time were some crayola drawings in the last pages of my old sketchbook.

Recovery drawings

I'm now grappling with wants, needs, and means in a new way. It's been four months since Babe came into the world. I'm fully recovered. It's well past my two month marker for maternity leave, but working from home and watching Babe all the time is tough. What I want is to start on some large oil paintings--big domestic scenes to work out some of my feelings about myself and being a mom--but that's not going to happen for a while. Babies take up a lot of time and money, and the most I can do is work small on paper with pencils and a little bit of watercolor.

Recovery drawings

What's a gal to do? It's time to figure out what I need and what my artwork needs instead of what I want for myself. Until I can distinguish those needs from the wants, I'll keep coming up short. It's a new step for me to let my work be dictated by what I need, but, like the drawings that came from my recovery, I think what comes from those needs will be surprisingly good and new. And, like always, I'll keep updates of my art progress here on my blog. Hopefully, you'll be seeing some really cool shit in the coming months, or, you know, at least something that you like.

Recovery drawings