The Glamour Fan Blew Me Away . . .

After working out today I decided to get my usual at Starbucks, a double shot of expresso. Usually I prefer to get a Tall double- soy latté but on days that you work-out you must refrain from any fat, and soy milk has a little fat. Fat supposedly slows down protein absorption, but so does blogging apparently since I am now ignoring my protein shake to write this blog lol. "Gulp" problem solved. Ok back to meaningful reality. I mixed a pinch of cinnamon and a little sugar in my double shot and proceeded to exit the café. I approached the door with an intense warm rush from the expresso & cinnamon, it's a tasty mix, and the moment I open the door a HUGE gust of wind came plundering over me, it lifted my hood over my face and it politely alleviated me of my favorite hat and carried it away to the street. All of the outside chairs and tables were thrown about. I continued to wrestle with the wind all while clutching my hot expresso and kneeling down to recover my hat. It was the most exhilarating experience I've had in a long time! I cracked a grin as I biked away. I attempted to take a sip of my expresso and I got a repeat dosage of exhilarating wind, it jerked my bike and caused me to spill expresso all over my hand. I licked it off and continued to bike home. Behind me I heard an angry Starbucks barista yelling at the group of teens hanging around outside the pile of thrashed about tables & chairs . . . how funny, this time they were innocent.

Do you ever feel like nature is reaching out to you to tell you something? Sometimes I feel that way, as crazy as it sounds. Or, maybe I'm just using the wind as a metaphor for what I've been feeling all along. I've decided that the wind today was my "Glamour Fan", kind of like the ones you see on photo shoots lol. I love when little things have such a profound effect, it's pretty rare. The way the wind opened the door, took control over me, and tugged me out, WOW it sends chills through my spine thinking of it! I feel it was a wake up call. I feel like I've been given this incredible bolt of energy and challenged to do something great today with it. I'm up for the challenge!

Today is my day, I'm off from work . . . I've worked out and I can really see results, and now I have to finish my new paintings that I am very excited about.

Ciao X

Let's trade recipes!

I'd say it's time to explore new recipes, but I am not interested in how to make your Grandmothers' famous oatmeal surprise cookies . . . wait that does sound yummy, let's just save that for a little later (I love cookies *yum). I am talking about success recipes.

I had a very inspiring substitute professor this week, his name was Christopher. He graced our class with his inspiring commentary, he had a clever way of adding to the topic of discussion without changing the subject too much. All throughout class he went on and on about various techniques for drawing particular objects, we were focusing on drawing hair this week; "You must think of it as smoke" he would say. Towards the end of class he summed all of his creative suggestions up very eloquently by referring to them as "recipes" for success. He mentioned that recipes help ensure that "you always deliver, even on a bad day". Well frankly put, I have bad days quite often . . . that is to be expected when working full time and going to school. I find myself passionately involved in both my job and school, so there is always conflict in my schedule and my creative production has declined. I think about how much more comfortable I am while cooking when I am prepared with a recipe. Of course I am most comfortable when I just grab my ingredients and jump right in, but that only means that the recipe is memorized, no?

So where do you find these recipes for success?

Your Grandmothers' cookie recipe may have been a home made concoction of your Grandmother, but it surely took some trial & error to get it right. How long does it take to bake a batch of cookies? A little less than an hour from start to finish. Let's put things in perspective. In life you have a very limited number of batches to bake before you are out of time, let's consider a career path as a batch of cookies. It can take decades to establish a career. I'm beginning to think that rather than gambling my life away by trial & error batches, it's time to find a contemporary success recipe and add to it my own personal touch; I am looking for a mentor.

A mentor for me would be someone who has fully utilized all of their talents to their best use. I need guidance. But of course I can't seem to describe exactly what kind of "recipe" I am looking for, I will know it when I taste it.

Novelty

I am an Artist severely distracted by this dreamed up place I've yet to reach in the real world. It's a place that many can ONLY dream of, and sure . . . fame, wealth, power & (added) beauty are apart of this dream place but so are more abstract things like creative freedom in all art forms and media, creative authority over the world, reigning taste, infinite creative novelty . . . something that can make or break your career's longevity. Novelty's shadow is cast upon everything I create these days . . . Like today for instance, I've skipped school twice now because I just realized that the 2X4 feet canvas that I am working on has sunken to mediocrity in the midst of the many corrections and revisions I have made to the original idea. I even wonder if the original idea was ever that great?

So what does 0ne do "Win he mind iz too cr8-z 40r he lev-L ov cre8div fr-E-dom?"

Currently I lack the proper tools, resources, techniques, to execute the complex ideas I have, therefore their very existence is arguable. There isn't a particular way artists think or behave. We are all very unique, and this is why art is such a commodity. We rival with one another not to out paint or draw one another but to express are ideas as effectively as we can with as little discrepancy from the original thought to the executed piece. I can't tell you how many times I have experienced great art in my own mind, that's where art really lives and breathes . . . The physical manifestation of art is merely the bridge between the artists mind and the viewer's mind. Art is first an experience in your mind, then it becomes executed in the physical world we all live in, and finally it returns to it's original state as a cognitive experience in the viewer's mind. As artists, we try to re-live the experience by making it tangible and bringing it to life. And that would be the measure of an artist, his creative power . . . the ability to accurately re-create at least a fraction of the magic that occurs in his mind.