'Vancouver' is finished

The last BIG thing that needed to be done before my show next week was finishing this piece. I’ve been working on it for quite a few weeks now and it really needed to be finished before the show because I needed a second piece in this size to get the flow of the show right. You would think that creating a work under a certain amount of pressure would have an influence. In fact the opposite has been true. Working on this piece has given me precious time to ‘relax’ and focus solely on the thing I love, creating art, in a time filled with organizing and businessy stuff. 

That being said this piece has certainly brought with it its own set of challenges, some of which I’ve talked about in this blog before. There were some technical firsts for this piece that have turned out really well and will definitely be repeated in future works. I will definitely be working on wood panels more often because that has really been a great experience. Although I might go for a different type of wood panel in the future. Attaching the different pieces of bigger buildings together before gelling so they result in one big gel sheet instead of several smaller ones had also been a great new technique that is definitely worth repeating. With this technique I’ll be able to go even bigger with my pieces, a challenge I’m looking forward to a lot. I already have ideas for a whopping big piece of Amsterdam, the city where I was born. Getting the amount of layers of gel right for the bigger pieces is going to be a challenge as well, it is a delicate balance that is going to require some more experimenting. 

As I said before, this piece was a big challenge from the start because of the minimal amount of pictures I ad to work with, especially when you keep in mind that it’s a big piece. The piece has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, it didn’t need that many different images to work and it has been an overall pleasant experience to create. It has given me many happy hours in the studio and I hope that it will give many people even more happy hours looking at it.

Shouldn't I be freaking out by now?

I’m about a week away from the start of my show and somehow it feels like I should be having panic attacks by now. I mean, this is going to be my first solo show and I’m basically organizing the entire thing myself so panicking seems like a very reasonable thing to do right now. And yet I’m still calm, I feel like everything is in hand. Sure I’m very excited about the whole thing and there are some nerves as well, I can’t deny that, but full blown panic, nope, not feeling it. 

I was working on ‘Vancouver’ the other day and that being the last piece that needs to be finished before the show you would think I’d be going crazy. I was totally expecting a lack of creativity or a complete painters block and I was totally surprised when I was just enjoying the fact that I had time to spend in my studio and just paint. I was completely and utterly happy!

I’m a fairly organized person (most of the time), I make lists and try to get things done well ahead of time. I think this is one of the ways I have dealt with the stress of all of this. I’ve kept myself busy with all the preparations. Having my lists and steadily being able to cross stuff off of those lists, even when other stuff would be added at the same time, kept me sane. When I start to freak out about something I just write it down on my list and let it go because I knew that when it’s on the list it will get done so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. 

When you ask him my husband will probably tell you that I’ve been somewhat preoccupied and I’ve been doing things way earlier then they might have needed to be done. I think I completely baffled him when I started assembling my greeting cards about four weeks in advance. But being this organized and prepared has its perks because now, a week before my show, I’m completely relaxed. I’m very excited about the show and I can’t wait till it’s all up because I want to see how it’s all going to look. It also means that I will be able to enjoy the entire experience because it’s not going to be over shadowed by last minute preparations. 

This being said I’m still wondering, shouldn’t I be freaking out right now?