Absolutely Ridiculous

I know there is a lot we could chat about that would fall under this topic but time and space won’t allow it…fortunately. Almost each and every day we encounter something to which a natural response might be, “What? That’s ridiculous!” The other title I considered for this week’s column was “Stupid, stupid, stupid”, which would’ve been just as appropriate.


Being an artist and an entrepreneur is somewhat of a difficulty in itself. In a pure sense, an artist will create art for the sake of art. When an artist chooses to make money from whatever talents he or she possesses then the picture (pun intended) changes, sometimes drastically. With a new season (summer) approaching us here on Main Street and the anticipated arrival of visitors (tourists) to our fair community I’ve been looking around the studio/gallery and trying to anticipate what it is that they, or you good folks for that matter, might be interested in buying.

If you’ve been in the gallery you know that I like to paint a lot of different subjects. Many are subjects that appeal to me and some are strictly “market driven” so to speak. It’s that “market driven” subject matter that brought me to a new series of paintings I’m doing. I make a number of note cards and prints of the paintings I do, and I was thinking of doing something new that might have a broad appeal. It’s been in the back of my mind for some time now and like many ideas I have, it got pushed to the back of my mind as I tackle life’s every day occurrences. Yesterday I decided that now is the time.

I’m starting a series of Colorado wildflower paintings. So far so good but the idea has proven to be more of a challenge that I thought it would be. My chosen medium for these delicate delights is watercolor. I’ve got all of the reference material I need so that’s not an issue.

The problem that I’m having is that I can’t seem to get the results I want and here is the point of this column. I tried five paintings and none of them worked. Frustrated, I lined the paintings up and stood back to have a look. They all looked the same. All five had the same problems. Then it dawned on me. I had repeatedly been making the same errors. I had continued to do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. How stupid is that? It is absolutely ridiculous to continue doing the same thing over and over and expect the effect to turn out different. That little insight can apply to many things. Lesson learned…finally.