Monday Muse

As you know, I like to paint. However, I only get around to it when the muse strikes, so to speak. And it doesn't seem to strike very often. You have to be in the mood to do a good job when painting a picture, or nothing looks right. At least, that's the way it seems to me. At home, I don't seem to be in the mood very often. Although I have a very nice room in which to do my thing, at the moment it's pretty cluttered, and truth be told, it seems to get that way really fast when I do clean up the scattered papers and stuff lying around. Consequently, there isn't too much room to spread out and get down and dirty, so to speak.

The last several months, I have been attending water color and acrylic painting classes that are given free at the local library. These have been fun and inspirational, but they have been sporadically offered. Fortunately, they are going to be offered monthly, and that is good. But something even better has come along. Terry saw a small article in the local paper a few weeks ago saying that the newly renovated main library in Shepherdsville was going to open its meeting room once a week for anyone to bring their own supplies and create art. This meeting time is Monday afternoon. I have gathered up my stuff and headed to the library the past two Mondays, and here you see the results of my labors. The two-hour time period is just about enough to complete one picture for me. I tend to be a one-sitting painter and not go back to the work once I've left it. The bottom one is a water color that I copied from an instruction book, with my own variations. The top one is an acrylic of the ubiquitous beach scene, this one being at Maui. It is very nice to go and sit with a bunch of like-minded people and create. It stirs the muse, I guess. Of course, most of the other women there are actual professional artists who belong to art guilds and display and sell their work, but there is another rank amateur along with me. We just mainly sit there and do our thing while we listen to the other ladies talk about the shows they've been to and the work they have sold. They all take a lot longer to finish a painting than I do, which makes me wonder if I am not doing something right, but I keep on.

I am hoping that through meeting these folks that I will have some entry into the world of art, in Bullitt County anyway. I would kind of like to hang some of my stuff on display in the local gallery, but I'm not sure about how to go about doing so. I wouldn't know how to price my work for sale or even if anyone would buy it, but it would be neat to see it hanging somewhere besides in the homes of my family members. Not that I'm not glad that they seem to like the stuff well enough to display it, though.:)

Meanwhile, I am glad to have this opportunity available each week that I can carve out the time to go. It feeds the muse...Life is good!