What are your goals for 2019?

If you’re talking about more paintings than you’re making, you may have a work-habit problem.

Christmas Eve, by Carol L. Douglas

I’ve been texting back and forth with a few friends about our plans for the coming year. These all involve metrics: how many shows, how many social media hits, sales volume, number of students, on-line vs. bricks-and-mortar sales. Artistic goals seem to play no part in this. Yet, without them, what’s the point of being a painter?

I’m not much of a New Year’s resolution-maker. I give myself one task on January 1, and that’s to remove myself from all the junk mail lists I’ve gotten on in the past year. That’s less a resolution than a reminder, like having your annual physical on your birthday.

Christmas night, by Carol L. Douglas

I address the things I want to fix in my life when they first appear as a problem, not on an arbitrary date in Christmastide when I’m already feeling sluggish from too much holiday. So yesterday when someone asked me about my artistic resolutions for the coming year, I was unable to answer.

But to say I don’t have artistic goals would be wrong. They include doing more abstraction, more small studies, and more forays into the world of magical realism. But don’t hold me to them. By midsummer, I may have abandoned these ideas completely and be fascinated by Kleig lights and cougars.

Schoolbus, by Carol L. Douglas

If that’s you, too, don’t despair. That’s the artistic temperament in a nutshell.  When it works successfully, an artistic temperament is a great intellectual curiosity coupled with very disciplined work habits. A lot of people have that backwards: they see undisciplined work habits as a sign of being ‘artistic’, and don’t seem to notice the paucity of ideas in the work being churned out. Or not being churned out. If you’re talking about more paintings than you’re making, you may have a work-habit problem.

I particularly respect my old friend Cindy Zaglin in this respect. She’s survived cancer and Hurricane Sandy. Her answer to every bump in the road is to trudge over to her Brooklyn studio to make more art. If she was worried about sales numbers, or critical reception, she could never have gone down the artistic path she has. (She was sort of a realist when I met her many years ago.) Whatever the question, the answer for her has always been to sort it out by making more art.

Nautilus was my last 'serious' painting of 2018, and even here I couldn't get the magical realism out of my mind.

I took last week off to spend time with my family. You’d think that with all that spare time, our house would be immaculate, but it’s the other way around. Without routine, it rapidly disintegrated into a mess. I myself was restless and fractious. By yesterday I was anxiously drawing in my sketchbook, eager to get back into the studio. And so today, between visits to my dentist to get a tooth fixed (ah, Christmas!) and my physical therapist to work on my back, I’ll do just that. The metrics and plans will just have to wait.

Taking stock (part 2)

Happy New Years!  6X8, Carol L. Douglas

Yesterday I wrote that I was surprised that I’d met my goals for 2014, with the exception of selling my house (deferred so my son could finish high school in Rochester).Here are my goals for 2015:

1.       To do a better job with this “accountability partner” thing. I got lucky last year.
2.       To finally learn to update my own website so I don’t have to whine at my children to do it for me.
3.       To identify meaningful ministry and pursue it. To have a talent is nothing if one doesn’t do something for one’s fellow man with it.
4.       To identify and purchase an investment property in Maine, one that will generate income while allowing me a place to rest my tired head.
5.       To create a master schedule of plein air events I want to do. While I realize I could just ‘follow the wind’ and still be working every week, it would be nice to be a bit more organized.
6.       To paint and show a series about wooden boats under sail.
7.       To get stronger and fitter so that I’ve got more energy when the summer painting season comes around again.
8.       To make this year’s Sea & Sky workshop a great experience for my students.

Angel, 6X8, Carol L. Douglas

Whew, that’s a lot of goals!

Somewhere out there, my accountability partner is schlepping her way home from New Jersey. After she recovers from the traffic and the noise, I hope she has a chance to email me her goals.

Double Rainbow with Unicorn, 6X8, Carol L. Douglas

What about you, fellow painters? Are you willing to commit your professional goals to ink this year?

Santa (blonde), 6X8, Carol L. Douglas

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

Taking stock

Any summer spent in Maine is a good summer.

In 2014, I had an accountability partner. Last January, we agreed to check in with each other once a month to review our goals. This was a flawed plan because she is a recluse and I hate talking on the phone. Then I lost my notes to myself and forgot about the whole thing.

Kaaterskill Falls, 8X10, oil on canvasboard, by Carol L. Douglas. In June, I painted in the Catskills with NYPAP members from across the state. Another iteration of Paradise.

Nevertheless, because no thought on the internet is ever really gone, I was able to find my 2014 goals. They were modest:

--Regain my fitness levels from October, 2013, in terms of health and work;
--Finish and hang my show at Roberts Wesleyan opening 3/24;
--Get a workshop schedule together for 2014 and market it;
--Get my house on the market.

My on-the-road shoe drying rack.

I started the year just a few days out from cancer surgery, so at the time I wrote these goals, I could barely walk, let alone work. Despite this, I finished the show for Roberts Wesleyan, and it opened to plaudits. I went on to have another solo show at Aviv Gallery downtown, and a duo show with Stu Chait at RIT’s Davison Gallery, plus showed and sold many other pieces in galleries.

Dead Wood, 48X36, oil on linen, 2014, by Carol L. Douglas, from God+Man show.

Likewise, my workshop managed to get marketed; in fact, it sold out. And my fitness levels are good—until I got the creeping crud a few weeks ago, I’d have said they were better than in October, 2013.

The last week of summer I spent painting with these amazing women in Saranac Lake, New York. From left, Mira Fink, Crista Pisano, me, Marlene Wiedenbaum, Laura Bianco, Kari Ganoung Ruiz, Tarryl Gabel.

In fact, the only thing on this to-do list that I didn’t get done was selling my house. And that wasn’t due to my inactivity, but because my son decided he wanted to finish high school here. Since it wasn’t a critical matter, we deferred selling for a year. That meant, of course, that I lived alone in Maine for the summer months, which convinced me that I don’t like living apart from my family.

Teaching, whether in Rochester or Maine, is my first love, and I've gotten to do a lot of it this year.

Note that none of these goals were financial. In my life, it seems that if I take care of the work itself, the money almost takes care of itself.

Tomorrow: goals for 2015.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

Happy New Year!

The Last of England, 1855, Ford Madox Brown

I pray that 2014 will be my year of long-sought escape from New York. (I’m not alone in this—New York barely holds its own in population, but the 52 counties outside the New York City area have been in a steady decline for decades. My home town of Buffalo is half the size it was the year I was born.)

Nothing could express my sentiments better than Ford Madox Brown’s iconic The Last of England, above. Brown was inspired by his close friend, the poet and sculptor Thomas Woolner, who was forced by financial difficulties to emigrate to Australia in July of 1852. This was the peak of emigration from England, with 350,000 people leaving each year. Brown was himself thinking of leaving for India with his young family. The painting seems to have been his way of working through the issue. It depicts Brown and his wife Emma, with their daughter, Catherine (the blonde child in the background) and their baby Oliver, visible only as a tiny hand emerging from the bundle in his mother’s arms.

Work, 1852-63, Ford Madox Brown

Leaving a place you love for a better opportunity is never a simple process. It combines loss and gain, fear and hope. Every potential émigré’s emotional conflicts are written on the faces in Brown’s painting, which is what makes it such an amazing and beloved work.

Brown never managed to emigrate, and although he is remembered as a great painter, he spent his life in a state of perpetual anxiety and financial insecurity. His anxiety only fed his financial problems, since it took him forever to finish anything.

Woolner only stayed in Australia for a short while, but while there he embarked on a lucrative career sculpting British imperial heroes. He was able to transplant that career back to his native England and was not only a successful sculptor and poet but an art dealer as well.

The Hayfield, 1855-56, Ford Madox Brown

Was Woolner’s audacity the result of his move, or the move the child of his audacity? We’ll never know until we try. I wish you all a very happy, audacious and fulfilling 2014.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!