Then I decided it was high time I got serious about my art, in a financial sense. After all, that’s what artists are supposed to do right? Look for angles, ways to promote myself, improve my lot in life. My life is already half over, so make hay while the sun shines, right?
. Wrong. My rebellious side decided I don’t need anyone to finance my art. I can scrape by. I will be discovered by accident. So I lost all my wind in my sails. I will try very hard to gather myself together.
There was a song I knew, back in my past life(when I was that other ‘cooler’ girl) entitled “When Will It Rain”. It plays in my head now: I walk on parched ground in my mind, thru a sweltering heat in a huge, empty landscape. Begging for the rain of Creativity to wash this dry spell away, saturate the soil of my aching mind, send cooling rivulets of inspiration into the cracks and fissures…
In one of the “Pirates” movies, the ship was stuck in the Doldrums. A very real occurrence for sailing vessels, this is a dire situation for the crew as the film depicts. I can imagine their suffering, stuck virtually motionless in the very water that also gave them so much bounty at other times of year.
Such is my plight as a Bipolar artist. Who knows, maybe all artists, all people, go through periods of feast followed by famine. Maybe I just feel it more acutely, or respond to it differently. This ‘stuckness’ is deadly for me, it frightens me into believing that my artistic talent is gone forever, like a well run dry. In reality, it is natural to experience some down time, it is even recommended to take vacations to ‘recharge’ and ‘renew’.
I know in my heart that I will be in fire with creative endeavors soon, and I will successfully sail to the next sighted port of call…but my disease tells me I’m dying in this vessel, surrounded by all the paint in the world, and not being able to lift my brush…
There are months when I sail along. Then there was April. Ouch.
Work in Progress: The Old Grove
Bipolar Disorder has a whole bag of tricks it can put to use on me, it used all of them. I let myself believe I didn’t need more than 3 hours sleep per night. In fact, thot I, I don’t need to sleep for 72 hours…48 is just too easy!
Spring on the Gulf
I’m so glad I don’t have schizophrenia. I deal with enough psychosis from insomnia.
KODAK Digital Still Camera
I hope to be creating more very soon. Right now I’m working on a little 16×20 landscape , and at the end of April I had entered 5 works into INSIGHTS V. So I’m kind of easing in to new ideas. Let it flow, baby!
Out of the Gutter Art 
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