Lil snaily thoughts!

I work at a very slow pace! At least with my ambitions! Commissions I feel more duty bound to get them out as quickly and to the best standards I can, it's a compulsion of mine to please! To prove myself! Not to say that drawing and painting commissions for others is negative stress. Any stress that comes my way during the commission process is teaching, I can learn how to minimise it in future commissions. Everything flows into the next piece, and so on. 

With my ambitions, which have severely fluctuated during this 2020 madness year, I feel such intense pressure. Works that no one is specifically guiding aren't fuelled in the same way that commissions are. I have to be the one commissioning myself, without the promise of getting paid. I have been making small passion projects, prints, zines, accessories and apparel produced by second party companies. These pieces I create for Society6 and Design by Humans have shown me the possible applications for my works. Prints, t-shirts, apparel. A small injection of a few dollars per month from these sites have shown me that interest and desire exists for my work in practical uses!

That's my constant battle as an artist and as a practicalist, I want each of my creations to be useful. 

Not to say that art isn't useful, I find it incredibly useful in healing, understanding, growth, processing. This year it has provided me inspiration and a window through which I can cherish aspects of my life, my past, my future? Connecting to something is valuable. Being able to create something through which we can connect is useful. Let me remind myself and every creative reading that you are useful.

On my personal goals and aspirations, I have been working slowly, slowly, at making more physical works. I am the tactile sort that wants to hold things. I want to manufacture pins. But I'm not in a financially secure position to do this right now. When I created the concept for my Ferocious pin, I was a little more comfortable with the thought of dropping 200 in the manufacturing. But I cannot do this right now. I am making peace with this through creating other physical pieces, and right now my drive is focussed on setting up a small screen printing space in my garage. I was blessed with a large amount of screens at a low cost from a dear friend who couldn't take them to her new house. I've ordered screen printing emulsion and am getting close to making bandanas and fabric prints to hold and sell. And imagine fabric tapestries?!!! 

At the start of this year I was feeling less inclined to make things of my work, now, however, I feel I must.