A ceremony is about a sacred ritual, it's about reverence, and it's a call back to all the other times in the past where this same ritual has been performed. When I think of ceremony in my painting practice, I usually have a routine: reading from an art book, turn on some music, fill up my water and sit down to paint. But I never thought of my painting practice as being sacred. Or that my painting practice could call back on the history of all the other times that I have sat down to paint before.
Maybe I need to start my practice with saying a little prayer or asking for spiritual guidance from my family ancestors to help me paint the truth of our family today. This is a special time for myself and I need to treat it with more respect instead of barreling through it to make paintings to sell.At the very least, I need to remember that my practice is a gift to myself.
Today I worked on adding the lights and skin tones in the middle of the painting. I'm very happy with what I came up with today. The value structure seems to be holding up well. I want to correct the background blues to be more green.
As part of #20For20ArtChallenge2022, I am reading from The Power of Daily Practice: How Creative and Performing Artists (and Everyone Else) Can Finally Meet Their Goals by Eric Maisel, PhD. Part I of the book covers 20 Elements of Practice. In this blog post series 20For20, I write about one Element every day and reflect on how to incorporate the Element into my daily painting practice.