It is easy to make new year’s resolutions but a waste of time if you don’t evaluate how you have gone in the past year. Late 2020, I created a plan for 2021 with a mission, goals and strategies. It was a very useful process which really made me think about where I am going and what I needed to do to stay on track and achieve my goals. I covered painting, learning, experimenting, research, marketing and social media.
Looking back now I realise that I was over ambitious in some areas, mainly in learning new techniques and social media. There were too many strategies so at times I was overwhelmed and pushing myself to hard.
My sales expectations were far exceeded and I did many things that weren’t planned; like revamping my website with the help of my smart and kind son. The previous one was way too frustrating. I also improved my work practice and self discipline and developed some very useful and efficient admin systems; to do with cataloguing(both visual and spreadsheet), pricing, recording and planning.
You are probably yawning by now because planning is rather boring!! The things I didn’t get done were those that were too tedious and boring such as doing colour charts, drawing exercises, daily social media posts and watching other artists Youtube videos.
So I have learnt to find other ways to learn and operate that suit me and how I think and like to work. So 2021 was a year of finding my way but also abandoning things that weren’t important or didn’t give me pleasure.
My work evolved more into expressionism although I still hanker after creating semi abstract coastal works. The images shown here are recent and nearing completion.They show those two styles. The coastal one may be for an exhibition at the Art Society of Tasmania entitled Wilderness. It is of the Tarkine coast in north west Tasmania.
