A little whimsy for your day

Though I rose early, feeling inspired this morning, I was called away for a few hours on an unanticipated errand, returning to a late lunch and a fairly typical post-prandial exhaustion.

You know -- it's not about aging: I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't long for a nap round about 2:00 or so. I remember when I was pregnant with my first and trying desperately to work as a marketing manager til the very last minute in spite of a chauvinistic and skeptical boss, I would close my door and curl up under my desk to catch a quick post-lunch catnap so I could be ON for his inevitable afternoon meetings...

At any rate, today's nap never quite materialized, so I returned to my studio more out of a sense of duty than out of any desire to paint. I was hungry for color, but the canvases I had gessoed this morning were small -- and I am never at my best if I can't indulge in large, sweeping motions.

(Someday I'm going to break out the giant canvas that still lies against the wall, wrapped in plastic, waiting for me to get the courage to tackle something that big. I'm mostly waiting til I feel like I've been consistently in the zone; definitely not there yet.)

At any rate, these are the results: colorful, fun to look at, I think, but certainly not great art (not that my other stuff is great art, but these are just... whimsy.

And maybe that's what's needed at times like these: permission to indulge in a little whimsy, to play, to let go of the need to create magnificence and just indulge the drive to create. It's sort of the equivalent of a chocolate-covered cherry; a quick pick-me-up to bring a little cheer into the day.

At least, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. However goofy they may be I still like them better than some of the ones I was doing at the beginning of this blog. So there!