Focus for Results

 January, 19, 2010

    Here are the first four paintings of England……the last one, England # 4 is just a color layout and will take more work to complete. Just thought you would like to see these as I paint them.

It’s all about FOCUS.

    Without focus in our lives we drift – maybe even to places we should not go. I think we all suffer this threat – I know artists are not the only ones – but the art of focusing is elusive and difficult to maintain (pun intended).  Companies, individuals, families, groups, countries, organizations succeed or fail if they loose track of their focus or maybe they just never had any focus, just scattered ideas without goals. My dialog about New Years Resolutions continues, but it’s not just about making lists. First you have to analyze yourself (or company etc) admitting where correction, growth or education must take place. Then and only then can you set appropriate goals which will need sets of steps with which to bring the goals into focus.

    Humans find difficulty being humble, dislike admitting faults and have trouble knowing what they should improve or change because they are in self denial. For artists, this self analysis can become debilitating. Every painting you do reveals your very soul, with all of its faults, aspirations, insecurities and hopes. When we share our work with others, we reveal our failings to the world. What other profession reveals so much of the individual? But to grow, we must reveal our weaknesses. Okay, so now you have revealed yourself and it becomes obvious (if you have the audacity to admit it) where you need improvement. Now you are ready for goal setting. You make a list of your goals, but without a focused set of steps to reach those goals, you will never accomplish what you set out to do. It’s all about FOCUS. Do you know where to focus for success?   Here follows my tale of loosing focus – a very recent and eye-opening event.

    Regularly, I flip-flop back and forth from feeling confident to uncomfortable about my painting skills and development. In the past, I jumped right in knowing that no matter how badly I painted today, progress came regularly and over the period of a year I grew considerably. Sometimes I even felt like a by-stander, anxious to see what growth would occur. Now it seems the steps are smaller and definitely harder to make. Or are they? Was I in a state of denial before and therefore took no responsibility for my own growth? This summer I awoke to a serious need for artistic improvement and instantly understood that, to do so, I would have to buck-up in the self analysis department. I could then see where my concentrated efforts should be placed. But this was all too vague to actually accomplish. I kept loosing sight and reverting back to previous approaches to painting. In the middle of all of this I took a workshop with Scott Christensen and suddenly I understood where to begin. You can read about my right brain/left brain awareness in past blogs and e-Newsletters. Now my course was set – no guarantees that my discovery would lead to improvement, but I now had real work to do – in other words a focused set of steps I needed to pass through to attain my intended goal. 

    Last week, as I knew I would, I got bored with painting scenes of England consecutively. So one late afternoon I grabbed this already laid out complex scene of a waterfall, rocks and green leaves…..Feeling confident from 3 quick paintings of England, I began to fully engage myself in the new painting. Soon, evening duties called and I left the studio.

On the Easel Breck Falls 20 x 24 Oil

   Many days later with household chores competing for studio time, my right brain dreaming about an exciting up-coming trip, and my left brain planning re-organization of my entire life, I returned to the studio and continued to work on this painting. I painted by rote – right brain not fully engaged and the left brain completely somewhere else. I had lost focus, forgotten my goals and my need for right/left brain communications. The result was awful.  I learned a valuable lesson. Studio time takes total concentration if I want to succeed. Without focus you will find failure regardless of your list or set of goals. You probably already guessed correctly about my failure, why didn’t I acknowledge that and spend time refocusing first? 

On the Easel Breck Falls 20 x 24 Oil

Okay so it isn’t as bad as you thought it would be. But look carefully. The distant leaf forms and rocks are suggested only, appropriately colored for distant objects and understood – these I painted the first day while in focus and control. But the middle ground is too tight, too complex, too cool in hue and generally lacking in understandable placement and purpose. I have the answers, thank heavens, so watch for progress once my two brains return to communication.

    I am human, I make mistakes, I fail and I forgive myself. But, if I can keep myself focused, I will eventually light the fire. 

    Thanks to you, my faithful readers for allowing me to carry on writing from the heart. Hang out on my web site for a while and return often as I always have new paintings to share. Please sign up for my Email Newsletter which comes out monthly, or so. 

    Thanks for your strong support and interest. Without you, I would loose sight of my goals and my focus would fade away.

 Cheers!

 Ginger