So it's official.  I have an Etsy shop.  For real.  I sat down and did it.  Now, all I have posted is the CEDs from last month.  So if you visit the site it is a bunch of shoe madness...but it is a start. Twenty-four items posted, right now at three different price breaks. It's live.

It was tough to get started.  

...ummmm...will it sound lame if I admit that I was just kind of scared? Makes me think of this quote from a speech by Nelson Mandela written by Marianne Robertson;

  
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? ...There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. ...It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

It is scary to put your work out there.  But you know, if folks don't like it they just won't buy it...and somebody else will come along that appreciates my point of view and will want the work. It is scary to think about failure..but success, or the potential for it,  is just as frightening.  Another thing that was tough...making the decision for prints versus originals.  Maybe I will go to prints one of these days.  I did make some for the last ANE show and some sold.  But in my gut I just can't get away from wanting to put the original work in the hands of the people that want it.  So for now, the work on my Etsy shop is all original...not just my own ideas...but the actual piece of art.  You can see where my hands have touched the work.  That felt like the right thing to do...along with keeping the prices affordable.  I just have to make the art, to get it out of my head and onto the paper, or canvas, or cloth...whatever.  I just make it and once it is out there as long as I have a photograph of it I don't mind sending it out into the world.  

So...it was a very busy, beautiful day.  From drawing way up in the sky on my way back to Florida...to a meeting with a client for an upcoming commissioned portrait...to an awesome lunch and afternoon in downtown Lake Worth with my amazing husband.. my cup runneth over.  Regrettably...all of this excitement will not turn back the clock to give me more time to sleep.  (Sigh)

It is such a weird feeling, painting.  There is the initial feeling of stress from that blank white expanse of canvas.  I mean, I am excited, but truthfuly, scared.  It's only paint, I can always paint over it, I tell myself.  Then, once I get started, and I get in a groove and things are working, the colors are mixing well...what a great feeling.  Like wearing down the tip of a pencil at just the right angle when shading.  Something clicks.  I usually listen to music when I paint, but when it's quiet for a second I can hear the paintbrush on the canvas and it's a sound that I love.

Then...suddenly...one paint stoke too many, one color intense and the piece is getting overworked.  Step back, stop painting, look.  Think.  Keep working.  And then you get it back, and then you lose it.  It is like a dance, sometimes I am leading, sometimes the painting leads.  

And I sure do love to dance.