multiple creativity disorder: Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

I know, it's been a very long time since I muttered so much as a word here. I'm so sorry about that, but it's not as if I'm laying around being lazy. In case you've forgotten me, let me refresh your memory. I'm the one that frequently tries to go in several directions at once and has numerous project running simultaneously. I seem to bounce around from one medium to the next, depending on my mood, or an outside deadline, or... well, the weather even!

Since I last posted any news of my projects, I have worked sporadically on about a dozen things, none of which are finished, but a few are getting close. And I also had out-of-state company, and went on a 6-day driving trip with my step-daughter, been working in the garden, had a root canal and post installed in a lower molar (3 dental visits so far) which gets a crown later this month. So I have plenty of excuses as to why I've let my blog go unattended... but enough!... let's get on with it!

To re-cap, I have a garden gate and entrance in the works (still not finished), a guest bedroom redecoration nearing completion, it's adjoining bathroom just getting started, a dining room almost finished in the style of Captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine, some wooden panels under construction to paint on (actual paintings, mind you!), and I'm drawing up plans to create some built-in cabinetry around the living room. Meanwhile, I have tried to find time to knit on a couple different scarves while I'm sitting in waiting rooms or taking a break from more physical work.

So let me just insert a couple photos to back up my story! First, the guest bedroom. Remember the ugly wallpaper I complained about in the kitchen a few months ago? Well, there's more where that came from. The guest room had an unsightly floral wallpaper that HAD to go! It all got covered in a nice, calm grey color. The baby blue desk and shelving unit was also painted to match the walls.

That desk had been my husband's when he was a child.... but aesthetics finally won out over nostalgia... and now it's GREY! It was such a joy to un-box all my books and art materials and get them back within reach. My pencils have never been so organized!

The room was barely dry in time to host our guests from Omaha over Memorial Day Weekend. Hopefully they didn't mind that the room also has to double as my art studio and office space.

My most motivated project lately has been the creation of 5 sets of wooden panels. I am attempting to attach smaller panels together in each set to create a larger piece. Most of them are made up of three pieces and have had to be clamped and glued on a very flat surface so they don't end up warped and mis-shapen.

My father-in-law set up a nice work space for me under the awning of his house. Since I have no sufficient space to work at my house, this has been a real big help. I have set a goal to have all five of these panel sets painted on by the end of summer. I'll be attempting to head off in a new direction for me, artistically. I have always worked in a very realistic style, but at the moment, I feel compelled to loosen up and get a little weird. My subject matter will be faces and they will probably be rendered in colors that don't make sense- with stripes, patterns, and textures that 'don't belong' on a face. I'm not going for anything resembling portraiture here. I want the faces to be fairly abstract so that they only suggest an expression or emotion. Well, I don't want to talk too much about the particulars until I get going. For a change, I will be able to make decisions all along the way about the work. In the past, once I had started, bringing each area to completion before moving on, the decisions were already made. I had to make each subsequent area match the first part. There was no playing around, no experimentation. Now I will have a lot more freedom, and I'm not sure whether to be relieved or worried. I'll let ya know.