The year is half over. Six months from today will be January 3, 2017. You will have survived the holidays, a few disappointments and hopefully a few wins. That’s all you know for sure.
How about spending the summer letting yourself fall in love with your art again? You sacrifice a lot to practice your art. I know that it’s a calling. It’s something you have to do. It’s even saved your life. But still, you give it your life.
Maybe it’s time to love it a little, to become dizzy with the passion for what you’ve surrendered your life to. And what a better time than this? When the berries are falling off the vine, the days are long, the grass is still green. Summer is the season of love.
Some ideas for how to love your art more:
- Visit a book store and smell the books. Buy one you love because it feels good to hold.
- Subscribe to a season of talks, plays, concerts. Make a regular commitment to enriching yourself with art.
- Write a poem, attend an open mike and read it aloud to strangers.
- If you’re a writer, read Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House.
- If you’re an artist, read or re-read Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit.
- If you grew up with a narcissist parent, read Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of OZ and other Narcissists.
- Subscribe to a magazine about your art or the business of art.
- Buy yourself a new palette knife or some new tool you’ve been yearning to try.
- Get up one hour earlier this month to write or paint while the world is still quiet.
- Be honest about your addiction to email and social media. If you’re checking it first and last thing, it’s probably not helping you become the artist you know you can be.
Fall in love with your art this summer. And it will love you back.
Photo by Ben Moore.