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Does life seem extremely hectic to everyone? It does to me and my painting has to adjust. I think the discipline of painting even in times of stress has two positive effects. It keeps me focused on what I love and that provides relief from stress, and it can also improve my "seeing" skills because it forces me to quickly analyze everything and therefore agonize over nothing too long.   

Belaboring a process is often the bane of freshness and life.  I don't mean ignoring the need for accurate drawing and color or missing the mark on composition.  But quickly dealing with all of the parts forces me to relate the parts to the whole and keep the center of interest always the center of purpose. 

These last few weeks I've had to squeeze in some time to paint so I opted for miniatures and one slightly larger work.   Because my time was limited, I also had to work with references at hand--real life right around me (and we had a great snow!) or photo references from my computer stack.  I'm finding I like to work from the computer screen photos because the lighting is more natural than printed photos.  Going through old references also forced me to see old ideas in new ways so that I felt like I was working on something fresh.

Here are a few samples of what I had going:

To kick start the creative process, I also changed my medium from time to time---  from oil to pastel to paint sticks ---and I moved between paintings instead of finishing one at a time.   The change kept me looking back at each work with new insights and feeling free to adjust my paintings with my mood.  And I'm still in process on a few pieces that I'll post later.

 I see why I'm a messy painter. Life is hectic and creativity can be messy. But I'll take paint-splattered shirts and brush-and-rags clutter any day if it means I can keep doing this wonderful thing we call art.