Setting My Best Beret Forward

Renewal by Icon

Already Thinking New Year? Yes, if you’re anything like me.

1. My signal to change is hearing myself whining about appreciation, sales, reads, time. All that good stuff creatives need. Do you have a process for changing direction mid-flight?

2. The first thing I do is write it down. I have so many scraps of paper. Don’t laugh, you “just-do-it” folks. That process is proven to imbed the thought in psyche as a precursor to action. Keeping the slip of paper isn’t the point. Writing it is like a pushpin to memory.

3. Fussing has begun. Upgrade everywhere, in studio, students, subject matter, styles, and products.

4. Inquire. When I began writing and painting, I asked those further along for advice. For ideas. My nephew Peter Granucci told me to determine my icons. So I began making lists of things I loved visually, like owls, butterflies, dragonflies. I kept idea files from newspapers or jottings from journaling that piqued my interest for a plot or a scenario for a book.

When faced with the daunting task of filling a 3-year-long contract for a month-long 2-person show in Southern Pines, I asked what smaller works would shine and sell. Medium range prices were the Exhibiting House’s specs. I’m reviewing these now. Which are repeaters?

5. Make a list, even if you’re not a list person per se. It’s a magnet for related answers called the cluster method.

6. Throw anything you’ve outgrown or never want to see again away. Organize subjects below your pictures. Coordinated clutter looks less cluttered. Throw some pictures away. Hurt, but felt better later. There’s a time to gather stuff, and a time to throw stuff away.

7. Think in series. Enhance what you’ve already begun by doing a new painting in similar colors and subject to extend or form a series. Ooh, that’s good for writing, too. Resonance works as well as novelty. “Airworthy” is the painting propelling my change this year.