It is this that time again. December is my month to think about what went well this past year and what did not go well. I wrote about this last year in the article, Why do an Annual Review? This review and planning time is like a combination of a spa and brainstorming session smashed together. Everyone needs to feel relaxed to come up with good creative ideas. So I’m going to be figuring out that balance over the next month of December.

Another question I’ve been asking myself is how do I want to spend my time? One of my favorite creative business guys Paul Jarvis posed this question in one of his newsletters. His idea is to figure out this question and work backwards as to the kind of things you want to do to fill your day. Play to your strengths and focus on those type of activities. You will do them better anyway than forcing yourself to do something you do not really even want to do. These guiding questions will help me figure out my 2018 focuses.

Most people have heard by now about the power of gratitude. It’s almost a cliché. People say "Yeah, Yeah. I know I should write a gratitude list or be grateful for all the good things that I have in my life. " As with all ideas that become clichés, there is a profound truth embedded in them.

When we live in a state of gratitude you begin to see the good all around you. When you start looking for the good around you, you see even more and more good in your life.  The power of gratitude is that it appears to magnify the good in your life. Perhaps the good in your life has always been there and it’s a question of seeing and acknowledging it

Many people attribute the quote “Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” to Albert Einstein. Based on my research, there’s no substantiation for this actually being said by him or in his writings. But it is true none the less, whoever said it. As an artist, it is easy to be overwhelmed by feeling we have either too much creativity or too little creativity. It can feel like a pendulum swing between two many ideas and creative block.

How can we get a creative boost when we need one?

This week I’m highlighting two additional Every Day Project series that are available for purchase in my online shop. It’s true as the title suggests. They are in a rectangle shape.  Here is the link...

My Shop

I mentioned last week that I have thought about using a non-square stretched canvas frame for my art. Well, here are the series I chose to display on a rectangle, to be precise a 16“ x 20“ rectangle. When I was deciding which series to use for this new rectangle form, I went back to one of my favorite series from 2015, Fractured Blue Sky. I wrote about it in this article . This was one of my most simple designs with the strong contrast between the white and the blue or green with the diagonal dark brown insert. This design takes on special meaning since yesterday we received an emergency phone call from our son’s college about a tornado warning and lockdown at his college. We were able to talk to him and he got to a safe space. All was well. Now I can add this to my list of worries about your children being away at college. Who knew that there were tornados in that part of the upper Midwest? When I originally made the series I wasn’t really thinking about actual storms per se but it was more about the sense of calm with the horizontal lines being disrupted and offset more like a metaphorical storm in your life.