New Years Resolutions -Getting Motivated

How do you motivate yourself, especially when the work’s not selling and no-one is remotely interested in it? You really have to keep showing up at the studio every day – at the very least to keep your work developing.

I paint very slowly and, if I thought about how long it would take to finish the painting sitting there in front of me, I’m not sure that I’d ever get started.
One thing I do to kick-start the session is to concentrate on just one small part of the painting, say a person with a scarf on – if nothing else, at least at the end of the day I can look at it and think what a cracking scarf I’ve just done there…

Generally I do hope to achieve a bit more than that but it does help me get going. And just the physical process of putting paint to canvas seems to do the trick and the ideas then start coming.
Or to put it another way – motivation follows action, not the other way around. Sitting around waiting for that one great idea means you don’t get much else done in the meantime.

As Chuck Close says “Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work”

2 thoughts on “New Years Resolutions -Getting Motivated

  1. I guess like you – I keep on developing my work. I always find it is interesting what people like and don't like – you never can judge it.
    I thought that people were interested in your work though and that they buy your prints?
    Thank you for posting this as we all need motivating from time to time 🙂

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