My Art Sanctuary

It’s taken months but finally my art/creative shed is complete! Last fall I was visiting family in Niland,CA, a tiny town built above natural hot springs. I go there to visit but also to unplug and relax. While there, I was reading an art book that showed various techniques. There was a whole chapter all about the importance of having a place to create art.

Until last weekend that special place was the kitchen table. Once dinner was done and everyone was out of the kitchen, I’d get my palette, paints, a cover for the table, brushes and my phone. Then I’d drag the easel from the corner of the kitchen and paint while the TV was on in the background and people and dogs would be walking by and chatting. I’m long used to this type of arrangement and wrote many of my books and stories on a crowded train or a crowded living room with the TV on and people and dogs around me.

But the idea of my OWN place to create enchanted me. I decided that day that in the spring I was going to replace the plastic tool shed with a read shed, a wooden one with windows and shutters. I was going to paint it bright colors on the inside, and soft brown on the outside.

I went back and forth on it from a financial standpoint as some life changes are coming soon but then decided I really wanted this and everything else would sort it self out. It always does.

Details don’t matter but I ended with a Tuff Shed. I can’t say enough good things about the process. It’s 8X12. I paid a tiny bit more for some of the extras like two 3 ft windows, a higher ceiling, a window in the door, a better subfloor. It came in about a week and was assembled in five hours.

The inside took a lot longer as I was doing this myself with my daughter’s fiancé (doing the heavy and technical stuff) and my daughter. We insulated and drywalled and painted it and added a peel and stick floor. We spent a lot of time and money at Home Depot getting supplies to make it as cozy as possible.We never have rain here, but we had a lot of rain, every weekend. This slowed our progress down but, drum roll, it’s awesome!

We can’t electrify it without permits so I got rechargeable lightbulbs on Amazon and put them cozy lamps (not plugged in). They’re just bright enough and last a long time.

I’ll be naming the shed one of these days and I’ll post when I do. For years, much of our craft stuff has been buried in bins so it’s nice that now everything is easily accessible in drawers.

I am enjoying it so much! If you can swing it, I highly recommend one.

-Tracy

Lots of New Paintings, and Why My Business is not a Business

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been too busy creating, working on my shed (the next post) and putting the final touches on my new book: I am Water.

After speaking to some people about my paintings and how I had to value myself, charge money, don’t do anything for free, I looked into making the painting a lucrative side hustle. Long story short, I wasted a lot of time setting up Printify, Shopify, an art Facebook page connected to both, and uploading and designing…but the amount of work and time required seemed never ending. And all the fun was sucked out of it.

The reason for my painting is twofold. The first is because I love painting. It’s peaceful and fulfilling and gets me in the Zone where I’m at peace. The second reason is the joy the paintings give people when they receive them. Once I throw “business” into the mix, and waste time on the business side, I’m not doing it for the right reasons and I feel that the work would show it. The magic in the paintings would be out the window, potentially.

So one happy day, almost as soon as I’d set it all up, I took the sites down and felt so much better. I’ve been unable to remove the Facebook page so I’ll use that to display my new works. I’m not charging for my paintings unless it’s from some rich stranger who insists, or it was a job for a business, and even then, I don’t know. People can pay for shipping if they’re not local. I anyone wants prints I’ll set up a direct ship at cost.

Without further ado, here are the newest ones. A cow, a friend’s dog, Dori.

Then a secret brother I didn’t know about, another friend’s dog (RIP Piper), a view from my aunt’s house in Massachusetts, a commission of the view from a lake house in Canada, and finally my grandson and two dogs at Valentine’s Day.

That’s about it for today. There may be other paintings, dozens in closets or the drawer of a cabinet but these are the most recent and mostly catches us up.

I’ve got an awesome new art area to work in that I’ve cover in the next post. Now that I have that retreat I’ll be producing more art and writing.

To creativity!

-Tracy