Blissful Artwork in 2010!!

Happy New Year Everyone! I've been away from my blog for a while. I spent 3 amazing weeks in India with my husband. We came home on Christmas Eve and it's been a whirlwind of holiday madness every day since! I plan to blog about it very soon! In the meantime....

With 2009 behind us by a couple of days already, I'm not feeling much like reminiscing about the highs and lows of the year as much as I'm completely excited about the endless, boundless, limitless possibilities that lay ahead! What I look forward to is a year of bliss like no other. I want to feel it in every area of my life - family, friendships, career, you name it. That's what we all want, when you really think about it. It's the underlying reason for just about everything we do - we want that happiness, that peace, a piece of the happiness. Bliss. I want to walk around with a shit eating grin on my mug that reflects a whole lot of good stuff going on in the inside. Bliss is addictive and it's contagious! And the world so desperately needs as much of it as possible. Which got me thinking about how I haven't depicted enough of that good stuff in my art over the years.

Let me reflect here for a moment. As an artist, I've spent a lifetime (literally) drawing a whole lot of pictures based on my interpretations of my emotions and experiences and all the so-called crap I've been dealt (woe is me). Often it was simply my form of therapy and it definitely got me through the rough spots. But time and again those sad, forlorn images have appeared in various portraits, gestures, colors, and landscapes that I've painted or sketched. I believe that while it was definitely an honest and sincere approach to expressing myself, I was spending too much time reinforcing the 'negative' emotions through my artwork. Here's a few examples from the past few years.



Ok, to be fair, there were lots of other illustrations reflecting happier moods, but I'm just using these as an example of how I might have been consciously or unconsciously reinforcing a serious case of the sads with my artwork a little more than necessary (ok, a lot). If I want bliss, that simply can't be an option (unless I'm hired by a publisher to illustrate such emotions;). So I'm starting off the New Year with some Happy!! I mean, if my art is going to be seen by people around the globe, I'd like to be a little more socially responsible, a little more giving of the good stuff, a little less focused on the drama (the world has enough of it's own already). Plus, painting a big old smiley face feels sooooo much better than an unhappy mug. Don't you think?

So here's my promise to myself and to you. Every day, I'm going to paint a ferociously, obnoxiously, authentically happy critter, creature, person, alien, vegetable, rock, or whatnot, and post it here. Like it or not! Of course, you'll like it! And I'll start with this happy octopus, which I painted yesterday! Ta-da!!!




I'm wishing you all the bliss you can handle in 2010!!!!! Let it come through in all you do, every day, every minute, in every way!