I am going to interrupt our flow of posts this week to bring you an update on the Student Exhibition at Fires Creek Winery.  All went very smoothly on Friday, assisted by help from several of the students including Lorraine and Lorraine, Deborah, Stephanie, Gordon, Diane and my wonderfully helpful partner John. And if I have forgotten anyone, I do apologize as my brain has gone to mush! I was up till 2 am this morning printing labels and all that other stuff that one has to do before an exhibition.

Fires Creek Winery

I think today gave many of the students a good insight into how much is actually involved in hanging a show, that one never really sees. From putting blue tak dots on the bottoms of the paintings to making sure that they all look good together. The latter can be quite a challenge when you are hanging a show that has many different sizes and styles of art.

Still all was done in a timely fashion and the show looks great.

We had an article in the paper last week …. and I did a radio interview with a local radio station arts reporter – Meredith Gilmore from Coast fm963 that went to air on Sunday night. So it’s been a very busy week.

A Vine Art Affair at Fires Creek Winery

The opening was Sunday afternoon and we had a great crowd turn out for it.  The show was opened by Fiona Crain from International Community Advocates – a local charity which supports women and children fleeing domestic violence.  The aim of  The Strong Women Project is to practically assist women and children with new essentials and help them on their way to establishing a new life.

This Weeks Question: Are you going to showcase your work somewhere this year?

Another vital indicator of how likely an artist is to succeed is the ability to focus.

What are you focusing on?

Are you  clear on your goals and do you finish what you start?

Even if you are only new to the creative journey, you will progress a lot faster if you set some markers of what you want to do.

For example if you are attending an art class, don’t just rely on the teacher to tell you what to do.  Have a clear idea of what you want to get out of your classes. The teacher’s job is to offer you choices appropriate to your skill level, however it is your passions that you need to follow, not theirs.

Now there are a few things that can stop us even if we have those goals. The first of these is:

Procrastination.  Are you a procrastinator?  Do you feel busy but do not feel like you are making any progress?  If this is the case then you are not really busy, you are just distracted and unproductive.

Do you engage in ‘busy work’ that doesn’t really take you any closer to what you are trying to achieve? Answering email is a great way to procrastinate and side track ourselves.  Is it really more important than making that ‘important’ phone call to the gallery or  the newspaper for an interview?

Do you get things done?

This Week’s Question: What areas of your life do you procrastinate in?  How could you win back some time for your self by getting this under control?

 Next Week Look For: The importance of playing in achieving success…

I promised in the last blog post on success to give you some real life examples of how the Law of Attraction works. This week I will tell you a short story about something that happened in my life. Although this story relates to finding a flatmate the principles involved in being successful with your art are just the same.

The story starts with a phone call from a real estate agent. He wanted to know if I had a certain Miss X living with me and what I thought about her as a tenant as she had given my name as a reference.  All this was news to me. I had no idea she was moving out. So to cut a long story short, I then had to advertise for a flatmate….. Now I had been through this before so I got out my focus wheel for what I wanted in an ideal flate mate and studied it again.

Focus wheel

Now finding a flat mate is an easy thing you might say, however not so easy to find a female, vegetarian, non smoker, no not as easy really as you might think.  However look at what unfolded…….

Well the first call I got was from a bloke – for heaven’s sake….. however he was a non smoker and a vegetarian – so the universe got that part right.

So even though I didn’t really want to live with a guy,  I decided to meet him for coffee.  Well  we got on pretty well, and he decided to come and look at the place in a couple of days, which he did.

In the mean time I got another call from a lady Sue who was – a vegetarian, a non smoker and an artist herself! Can you believe that.

She was also keen to come and see the house, so we organized that and in the interim I got a call from J saying he’d found somewhere else with more room. Anyway Sue moved in and all proceeded well.

However there is another amazing side-story to this event, which had begun a couple of years before this. I had left a relationship 4 years previously and was now thinking about the possibility of looking for someone.  However a good friend said to me, why don’t you write down everything you would like in a relationship. Put a heading for the following things thatyou would like in a partner -Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually and list at least 15-20 attributes under each one.  This made me really think deeply about the kind of person I wanted to be with. So I did that and then forgot all about it.

So to return to the renters, J had called to say he didn’t want the place and for some reason I said, “well OK fine – would you like to stay in touch. ” I’m always open to connecting with like minded people.  Well we went for an afternoon coffee and ended up talking for 4 hours and as they say – the rest is history.  And the irony is that now all the other flat mates have moved out and J moved in and we have been living together for just on a year!

This is a true story. The universe bought the love of my life- right to my front door.  There is no way in all the world I could have orchestrated all those turn of events – I’m still amazed to this day at how that happened!! AND he ticks nearly every single item I had on those lists that I made many months before.

The KEY thing here tho is that I had no anxiety around looking for a partner, heck I wasn’t even really looking, and certainly didn’t feel ready when he came along.  I followed my intuition however and WOW – Amazing!! BUT I did put out clearly what I wanted in a flat mate and I have ended up with as near perfect as I could wish for!

I think we have to be patient and allow the universe time to arrange it all and whatever we desire can surely come along.

This Weeks Question: What do you really want in your life right now and for your creative  success?

Next week: More on being a successful artist – Focus

A Vine Art Affair II

A Vine Art Affair – Venue

Well it’s that time again.  After many months of turning up at class every week the students have a wonderful body of work really worth seeing!  So please come along and join us at Fires Creek Winery Holgate between April 6th and 14th.

I think you would have to say that there are many things that go into the mix of an artist being successful.  However of all of them I believe that probably the most important is MINDSET.

First and foremost  it is your attitude.  The same holds true for anything really from being an entrepreneur to an olympic athlete.  If you don’t have the mind set you will never make it. So what do we mean by MINDSET? Well there are a few factors involved.

There is a saying that goes something like this …. If you think you can – you can and if you think you can’t  well that’s true too. I have touched upon this idea in previous posts, but really it all comes down to a universal law – the Law of Attraction. How does this work?  What you focus on and have an emotional connection to determines what manifests in your life.  How might this work for you as an artist?

Well I can give you a real life example from many years ago.  I had organized a group exhibition with some other women, who had been students of mine at one point. Anyway, I had a pretty negative mindset back in those days, and although I was trying to think positively, at some level I just ‘knew’ I wouldn’t sell any thing at that show.  And guess what? Of course I didn’t! And not only that all the other women sold at least one painting in the show!  I was mortified, crushed, and disillusioned to say the least.  However looking back I can see so clearly now that I created that.

The other women on the other hand were all happily optimistic, it was their first group showing and they were happy and excited with no great expectations.

So that is the first thing you need to work on.

You know the principles of this work for anything – it sounds simple but lining up with it is entirely another matter because we always seem to get in our own way! Here are the steps…

• Be very clear about what it is that you want ( ie to sell 3 paintings at the show)
• You must believe that this goal is possible for you to achieve
• Feel really good about the idea and then
• Just forget about it! Yes you heard me right – Forget About It!

We don’t have to do the ‘How’ – the universe takes care of that – providing you with opportunities you could never have managed in a 100 years.

Oh and then there’s one more very important thing – Get Happy!! The happier you feel the quicker your desire will come about.

I have 2 quite amazing true life stories about this process that I will share in the coming posts.

To get back to Artists success, this is just the first step. Stay tuned to this spot in the coming weeks!

This Week’s Question: What does success mean for you?

Next week look for: News about the student exhibition in April

Now here’s a subject to make even the more resilient of artists, blanch and go weak at the knees, never mind the newbie.  Why are we so afraid of selling do you think? Well, come to think of it, it’s not necessarily about selling is it?  More often than not it’s about just even showing our work.  It’s so confronting, so challenging emotionally.  Now why would that be? Well for one thing we have a lot invested in the whole thing. For some its the cost of the materials – the time and effort and feeling we can’t charge enough to get all that back. Rather more than this however, it is about the investment of ourselves.  When we put a painting on show, there is always that questioning of our self-worth.

• Is it good enough?
• Who, me exhibit… I couldn’t possibly, I mean I’m not really an artist ……am I?
• Will anybody like it?
• Will anybody like it enough to buy it
• And then if they do – oh .. I don’t think I can possibly part with it – look at all the time and effort I put into it, it’s my baby.

Let those babies go

Our art works are our children – they are creations that we put a lot of time and effort into. However like all children, at some point we must let them go.

I think that many of the things Kahil Gibran said about children can be related to our art -

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

As do our art works.  And this ………….

“You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.”

Our creations are made to be released into the world, to be shared with others so our unique vision may be shared with the world

This weeks Question: What artworks haven’t you let go of yet that you could?

Next Week Look For: What makes an artist successful?