In all the art books I've been reading lately, I find a section on risk taking.
Over and over again, I'm reading: Learn the techniques. Show up at the easel. Take some risks.
For me, this means painting even on days when I'm not in the flow. Painting one more painting even when the last three are awful [and I'm not being modest here. A lot of them are awful.] Also it means showing my work to actual humans who don't live here. Also it means sending my work to competitions even when I know the quality of other applicants' work is way beyond me and that I'm nowhere in their league.
So I showed the painting above to some people at the local watercolor society and they suggested I enter it into the juried show of the Watercolor Society of Indiana.
Two new risks here:
- Joining the Watercolor Society of Indiana.
- Sending my work in to a juried show.
A juried show is where a judge looks at photos of all the entered works and chooses 30 of the best ones to be featured in a show at a museum or gallery. The Watercolor Society of Indiana has a juried show every year to showcase some of the amazing talent of its members. The show hangs for 2 months at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. At the opening, some of the pieces get additional awards. Here's a
link to the award winning art from 2015. At the top of that page, you'll see a link to all the pieces juried into that show. It's pretty darn good art.
So I sent it in. And finally the letter came. And it said my painting was accepted.
So that was good.
As in Whoo-HOO!
This painting will hang at the Indianapolis Museum of Art from Oct 9 - Dec 4, 2016. I hope you get to see it there. [It's prettier in person.] There are new risks to take [like showing up to the opening] but my new goal is to Just Show Up. I will show up at the opening, look at the really fabulous art that will be there, hopefully get to know some of the best watercolor artists in the state and smile, and listen and learn. It will be a grand experience.
