Tonight I pulled out my paint brushes, acrylic paint, canvas and got to work. I’ve had a number of ideas rolling around in my head for months on end and I just had to get a couple out. Started, something. With headset plugged in, I worked, cut, glued. Got annoyed every time I got a notification on my phone and my music went out. Yeah, don’t know how to change that. Oh well. I felt free, release. I don’t pre-sketch much. Usually it’s for a client. I just keep those ideas in my head. Some times it gets to be too much. But if I sketch them out, they usually don’t become. I feel like I got it out, so therefore, done. As I delved into my self, I found myself thinking of many different things.
One of the many was the big word of “Branding”. I had someone I was working with that I felt enjoyed my work, loved it even. She saw it. I was thrilled. Big ego boost. The more I worked with her, the more I realized she didn’t really know me. She thought she knew me. She decided that I was very hipster, and I thought really? Am I like that? That was how she wanted to promote me, that I would be perfect. My jewelry was totally hipster. So then everything should show that – my logo, my website. At first I thought, wow, didn’t know that about me. The more we got into – she even wanted me to dress differently. I decided that I couldn’t do it. That was not me. Then being the sweet talker that she was, I somehow believed (once again) that this was the way to go. But as I talked to my friends and business acquaintances, they didn’t get it. I found that I couldn’t explain it to them. That’s when I began to realize that it wasn’t me. And I felt that I was the artist and people connected me to my work. I tried to explain that to my branding person. But she disagreed. To me, it is me. I am the person behind that pair of earrings, that painting. It is me. I am in it. One must be authentic – how would people feel if they thought they knew me as this hipster chick, when really I am more classical and geeky at the same time? I have to be me. So does my “branding”.
Another thing I thought of (which goes to show you, I can dwell on things forever before I came come up with a good answer) was the question of “where do you get your inspiration?” It can be so hard to pin point. When I tell people it could be anywhere, anything, any person that can inspire a new pendant or a new use for materials I have laying around. Sometimes I get this look of “really – pleeeeezzzzz”. Today it was the Humans Of New York book by Brandon Stanton. I was looking through all the photos. Breathing in the colors, shapes, feelings. Wishing I could reach out and touch these people that Brandon has brought into my life with the snap of camera and snips of conversations. Wishing I was brave enough to dress like some of those people. One photos made me cry, another made me inspired. Inspired enough to uncap that tube of paint.
It also reminded me of other paintings that I had stuffed up in the attic of my mind. They started knocking on the inside of my head, “Hey don’t forget us, we still want to get painted. In oil!” One at a time. But it will be your time eventually, I think to myself with that nagging feeling of you don’t have forever. You will reverentially run out of time and you will never know when it’s coming.