Good intentions! Oh dear, you know where they lead, don’t you! There are so many good procrastinating strategies, it’s hard to choose which one to use next. But the best of all assailed us in the UK last week – a big freeze. I went out to the studio one morning, togged up in double thermals and so many layers I couldn’t easily bend down, and optimistically switched on the fan heater. An hour later the thermometer showed zero degrees C. Given the price of electricity currently, that was ample excuse to give up and go indoors where all the other ‘P’ strategies lurk š
After using this as an excuse for not doing anything more creative than baking (chosen because having the oven on warmed the kitchen!), I came up with an ‘anti-P’ strategy. I set up a work station on my sewing table. Away went my sewing machine and all its accoutrements. Out, or rather in, came all my dry media, paper, sketchbooks, cutting mat and protective brown paper cover to keep the table looking like a clean area. I’m too messy to risk bringing paint indoors. I only have to look at a tube of paint to somehow find it on my fingers and anywhere else it shouldn’t be. So, while the frost grew thicker and the temperature dropped to -8, I worked in my little sewing room in the warm.
And what did I work on? Well, there’s another story. My focus words for this month included EXPLORE, EXPERIMENT and DISCOVER. So, having attended a workshop on a new way to collage with artist, Lupe Cunha , that’s what I’m exploring. What fun! Tearing up paintings I didn’t like anyway and turning them into a new work entirely. Watch this space for more developments on this front but here’s a taste of my first attempts:
Of course, the weather in England is never what you expect and this week it’s given me a new twist on Procrastinating. Today it reached 10 degrees – warm enough to work in the studio and progress that painting on the easel, but did I? No, I did a bit on another collage, updated a page on my website and now, here I am, blogging…
Oh well, it could be worse. I could be baking. LOL.
Wendy J Allen Art 