Now that the exciting Camano Island Studio Tour has been completed, my dad, Jason Dorsey, and I are focusing on getting ready for my first solo Art Show this August. I got to take a week off of work after the big weekend tour with my family, so I am rejuvenated and hopefully ready to pull this art show together. The main problem I face now is sitting down to paint lots and lots of pieces. I’ve come to the point in my art career where I know what I am capable of doing and I know how much more I need to grow. Although this is helpful for me to gage the quality of each piece it also makes my standards higher and more concise. Combined with my regular artist block struggle, the task of sitting down to paint becomes more stressful and less fun. Today, when I go to sit down and paint, I will do my best to remember I’m doing it out of joy and love for painting more than anything else. Hopefully inspiration will hit and I will enter into my own world where instinct kicks in and I just create. The paintings I’ve done when enter this groove turn out to be my particular favorites, and the paintings that I don’t want people to buy.
Besides the struggle of artist block, I am faced with the fear that if I put myself and my art out there, there is a chance no one will like it. For every art show I have been apart of since 2014, I have had to sit in this fear and remind myself that my value isn’t in my art but in God. Of course it’s always easier to say this and to remind myself in the moment and it is much harder to believe. Part of facing into the knowledge that putting myself out there could mean failure, happens when I sit down at my art station and just do. But when I am painting, I’m not painting for anyone else but myself, and the joy it brings me. Of course, I want my work to glorify God and reflect the beauty he has created in the world too.
One way I have been avoiding all of these fears is by working on other things, like the posters for my art shows and digital art on procreate. I have also been working on building my own website so I can have a digital art portfolio. When it came time for me to sit down and work on my posters, I had to try to figure out Adobe Illustrator by myself. And I’m quite proud to say that I didn’t figure it out at all, but I still managed to cheat the system and make some semblance of a poster, with the very small knowledge I have of graphic design principles. I will probably continue working on them and I wouldn’t be surprised if the final product looks completely different from the originals, but here are the posters none the less:
Besides all the fears I have leading up to this art show, I am excited for the challenge of growing artistically, mentally, and emotionally as a young artist. I hope you guys enjoy watching my journey as I continue to stumble and dance towards my dreams. I hope to see some of you at my first solo art show opening in August.