Reprieve

I've been on a month-long leave from the day job; today was the day I was supposed to return. I took it so that I could spend a good chunk of time painting, to try and get a little bit ahead with my work. But the composition of my Tacoma Art Museum symposium talk took way, way more time than I expected. It was worth it in the long run - it went very well - but it took up three-quarters of my time off. So I asked my supervisors at work if I could have two more weeks, and they thankfully said yes. So now begins the two more weeks.

Besides just wanting to get more time to paint, the other reason for taking the leave was to try and figure out what it would be like to be a full-time artist, the life-style of the thing. I don't know that I'm really all that near to making that transition, but I still wanted to see how much work I could really produce if I didn't have to go to another job. And, maybe more importantly, to see if I could get an idea of the balance I could strike with art-making and non-art-making time. No artist can just sit and make art all the time. Even without having to break to go to a day job, you still have a life that needs to be integrated with the time used for art-making. And if I spent all my time painting, I'd just go nuts. So what would a balance look like? I hope to get some sense of that in the next two weeks.