I record CHARLIE ROSE on PBS and listen in the mornings before work or starting the day. He has an inquiring and open format that allows reason to open out and through his questioning unexplored insight becomes my thought for the day. This morning I listened to Charlie opening conversations with Johathan Alter, Bob Schieffer and Paul Begala. Although they spoke on things entirely different from the underlying thoughts of my own, I listened as they opened their views on the campaign for President.

One should know that I have a very deep habit of listening to the ideas and opinions of others, particularly those whose ideas and opinions have accomplished something of merit in our society, and retranslating it or adapting the ideas to fit my objectives. So when hearing this morning the insights they shared individually and collectively about the personalities running for office of President, I observed that there was something in those view points which I might be able to use to shed light on the problems I am having in finding my way back to painting and living a productive life. The larger the personality the easier it is to observe the traits or ideas and the larger the accomplishments the easier it is to identify the components.

I am trying to use the designs I built for 16 years. I am trying to apply my mind to understanding how I might do that and return to the creative act of painting. While opening the portfolio, I re-discovered that the designs were built for products; therefore, they could be used on print on demand products with little or no problem. They were not sacred. Never were and that was a motto that I used many times over the years as I built the collections. The position I am in today is very different from the position I was in when I built the collections. So what was it I was doing and how did I use what ever it was to build the work. What happened to stop the work. What and why I am trying to do today with those same images? So when I heard them, the men above on Charlie Rose, say that Obama had recently focused on Obama rather than what it was that Obama was going to do, my mind grabbed the thought. I have been focusing on my own pain and not on what or how I am going to use it to produce.

‘Round the horn? Maybe. But that is the thought that opened my mind this morning and that is the place where I need to center my direction. It changes nothing regarding my emotions but it does help in removing the cart from in front of the horse. When I painted and sold eggs to retailers, how did I do that? I painted thousands of eggs every year for 10 years. How did I do that? When I painted images for manufacturers and built collections and presented them successfully every year for 16 years in New York at the SURTEX show, how did I do that? When I packed everything up and closed everything down and moved to the mountains, how did I do that? When I arrived at the cabin in the woods, how did I put it all together? Well, I realized this morning that I needed to modify my thoughts a bit. I was thinking too much about my ‘self’. Perhaps, if I changed that just a little I might be able to find the focus that I have previously used to build.

That is I used my mania to build. I used my will to stay in the kitchen when it was hot - real hot. I would play Offenbach’s prelude ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD until I was exhausted. I would use it to feel and then stop, dead in my tracks, return to the calm focus of the work at hand. I did this with Mozart. I did this with Charlie Daniels Band, Redneck Fiddlin’ Man. I would play the Tractors (their country rock) until the sound vanished and the mania was exhausted. But at the same time I was playing these CDs, I was painting and building images with speed. I would paint as many as five designs at once. Five-up I would call it. So that is some of what and how I worked my mania as a tool. But to do it over and over for 26 years and each time it was like new, how did I do that?

My mania rapid cycles. A lot of hilly roads. But underlying a continuing build ascending upward in the fall of the year and blessedly arriving a the fall equinox where all was perfect if only for a while. This is my time for building, for creating and for an iron will to be applied to clear objectives. I would fly across the sky like a Phoenix right into the eye of the sun and fall every evening into my ashes only to rise the next morning and do it over and over and over. I would not trade that for any part of a smooth even playing field.

So here I am. In a log cabin, in the Smoky Mountains, with large portfolio of product oriented art work... I was derailed by the villain CANCER which attacked my husband, my friend, my companion, my partner in life. It took me from 2002 until the summer of 2005 when I packed up and headed for the mountains, for my production to suffocate. And for it to suffocate completely, it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 when I got a grip of the hole I found myself in, that I started to rebuild a new phase. So I am through bleeding all over myself. It is not about the pain or the problems, or all the fine yesterdays. It is all about how I take what I have and what I am and rebuild it all. A little different perspective but that difference makes a monstrous difference in accomplishing the objective.

OBJECTIVE: Regain dominance over my plight. Make the existing images work. Paint.
TOOLS: God given talent. Mania. Will power and focus. A brain. Ability to stay in the kitchen when it is hot.

Tags: "will power" direction "artistic creations" mania