Steven Sweeney claimed he couldn’t get the comments to perform (hope that hasn’t transpired to anyone else). He desired to increase this:
I resolved final February, on the afternoon of a working day in the workplace cubicle that begun as any other, to pick out an uncertain regret in excess of a certain just one. The latter would be to wish, late in life, that I’d taken advantage of each my keen fascination in and intensive training in drawing and painting. The former “regret” includes walking away from the bi-weekly paycheck, the wellness and retirement benefits, the relative certainty of being aware of what I would be “doing” every working day for work. I moved all my dwelling space household furniture to the jap 1/3 of the place and converted the other 2/3 to a portray studio–daylight lights technique, blackout drapes, easels, a year’s source of paints, medium, canvas, boards, brushes and frames. I experienced specified my company employer 6 months’ notice, so that I could effectively practice my substitute. In the 10 weeks now because “retirement,” I have put in 80% of my days working with other folks’ troubles (really serious, not trifling), but the word is receiving out that there are times when I won’t decide on up the phone or reply to your electronic mail, for the reason that I’m in my studio. It is not a enjoyable tiny pastime, it is my new vocation, my job, my function. I will probably miff kin and get rid of contact with some close friends in excess of this. So be it. Previous night time I intended and printed new enterprise playing cards.
I’ve joined a group of like-minded individuals (Out of doors Painters of Minnesota) and will sign up for many of them around the Canadian-Minnesota border in late January to paint plein air wintertime scenes for a week. (About this, a gallery proprietor, a plein air painter himself, remarked just yesterday, “You’re insane.”) But most importantly, I know that I need to have to spend a yr making up an inventory of large-high-quality perform, to evidence my abilities as effectively as my intentions. I see innumerable paintings every single working day that are “better” than what I at the moment make, and however they remain unsold. This does not prevent me. I have sold paintings in the earlier, and will do it yet again. I have to get the job done smarter than I did just before. Prints and take note cards I’ve developed from my paintings continue being quite popular, but I have to have to resource affordable suppliers of the components. Of course, I’m sensation a fiscal pinch by now, which simply just means I have to shift on altering my priorities. In quick, I just cannot do it all at after, but I can do a thing each and every day, and “something each day” is the difference involving do or do not. And finally, DVDs, books, workshops and classes provide facts and inspiration, but right until I’m pushing paint around on canvas or board with my very own arms making use of my individual resources and skills, I’m no artist. No matter if I regret the improvements I’ve produced in the past 9 months is mostly up to me. I can have the mind-set about it that I select. So far, so very good.
– Steven Sweeney

