Slowly Settling

Hooray for artistic talent that is beyond my comprehension...

So I am officially in-processed and I start my new gig on Wednesday!  For the first time in my life, I have my very own, massive office with a huge window and a couple of delicious vintage-y leather chairs, and endless wall space to hang art of my choosing! Soooo very excited!! I also passed my driving test and have obtained my British license, which is a relief.  Not that I’m looking forward to navigating massive speeding roundabouts, but apparently I’m legal to do so. 

We move into our place on Tuesday, which I am also incredibly excited for.  No more pooing the dogs on leashes!  Our furniture and things may arrive sooner than I expected as well, which will bring me much joy.  I am particularly excited for our bed and bedding, my good knives, my magical garlic roller and drawers and drawers of art supplies.  It’s funny the things we end up missing the most.  My husband is of course excited for his reunion with the 52” flat screen and blu-ray player.  And most of all, we will be hugging the grill and slinging tasty slabs of meat and veggies all the live long day.  Stove top meat just doesn’t cut it anymore I guess. 

The last couple of weeks my mind has also been consumed by the development of my shop on Etsy.  This has been something that has been on my mind for a long time now, since my discovery of Etsy a couple years ago.  I’ve never been good at marketing myself or talking about my work, I think mostly because I don’t feel like I can ever explain it well enough to convey what prompted the creation in the first place.  I also have always felt strange about profiting off a gift/talent that I was born with.  It can be quite the conundrum.  But as I get older, I feel less strange about it and have more of the mindset that – if I can create something that brings someone else joy, and they are willing to pay to own it, then that begins to construct the dream that everyone has of getting paid to do what you absolutely love to do in life.  So that is the direction I’m trying to head.  Another slight obstacle is the fact that I love to paint massive paintings on thick-edged canvases, which results in outrageous shipping fees for myself/the buyer.  So I’ve been working on ideas for products that serve a purpose, are functional, beautiful, depicting of my style, which I enjoy creating and are affordable for the buyer and inexpensive to ship.  Enter the silk painting class that I had been hunting for for months – the weekend before we left Phoenix.  Perfect.  I fell in love, and painting super rad and beautiful silk scarves fits all of the above criteria.  So while I’m still going to be painting giant canvases as I see fit, I am also transitioning into 8”x56” silk painted scarves as well.  I’m thinking about starting another page within this blog that is solely dedicated to the artistic process once I get my studio set up in our new place.  I think it will be really interesting to be able to look back on pieces and the making of as I move forward with this.  It will take me a bit to build up the inventory of course, there is a steaming and hand-washing process that comes after the painting is done, but I’m really looking forward to the whole process and the finished product and of course seeing the shop itself come together.   

Send good creative energy please!!

With love and gratitude,

Em