Trying to find your art style…it’s not easy and takes a lifetime

On a hike behind my former home in Chimayo, NM. Looking and painting what I actually see in the real world.

I am an artist. That statement coming from me actually is a stretch. I have never really thought that it was true. Oh yes I have made art my whole life but never with any confidence that I was an artist. I couldn’t stand criticism and would leave any work that might put me in the crosshairs of others confirming what I already thought - that I wasn’t a REAL artist. I suffered from tremendous self doubt, constant changing and pulling away from spurts of inspiration and allowed myself to be distracted sometimes for decades by life issues. 

“Finally Free” 16 x 20 oil painting. Painted from imagination and memory. This is looking inward into how I feel about my life.

So this blog is going to share issues that I have had as an artist. The failures and the successes. The path and the diversions. I am 72 years old and I never believed that one could still have doubts at this age. I always assumed that older people had it all figured out and they could just live out the rest of their happy figured out lives. Ha! I don’t feel much different than I did at 30. I look different unfortunately. But not much has really changed. 

But in August, 2019, I moved alone to Tucson, AZ and bought a house across the street from my daughter and family. And that has produced the biggest change in many years. That journey is what this blog will be about. 

And I created this new website and blog page and open it with “I am an artist”. That is not a simple statement to me but is loaded with complex feelings and meanings. I hope over time I will actually believe it.