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The fine art of rambling

So I've had the new Black Eyed Peas track stuck in my head on an ever-repetitive loop all morning. 'I gotta feeling...' you know the one? 'That tonight's gonna be a good night...'

Anyways, usually having such a fun, bounce up and down on a dance floor, song in my head while I'm working would just seem plain mean. But today, well I think of it more as a warm up, a promise of what's to come.

While I may not be dancing later tonight I will be eating good (lovingly prepared) food and catching up on all the 'hot off the press' news with two of my favourite girls and their equally fabulous partners. It can only be a 'good, good night' and a fitting end to a pretty good work week.

You see, I did not one, but two (yes TWO) diamond deals yesterday and managed to finish the first painting in my new series earlier in the week. And the really awesome thing is that I actually (really) like my new painting and didn't get the urge, not even once, during the painting process to hurl it off of my third storey balcony. If you knew me and my history with throwing tantrums at art school when 'a piece just wasn't working' you'd understand what a shiny, glitter covered achievement this was/is.

Artists's are prone to behaving like toddlers at times and sometimes battle to pay attention long enough to finish what they start. I have three half-finished paintings leaning up against a wall in a corner of my studio. Will they ever get finished? Maybe...

... when I'm 91 and really REALLY bored in an old age home somewhere I'll choose finishing an unfinished work over playing the twenty-seventh game of bingo in a week. Basically, I've gotten procrastinating (when it comes to my painting) down to a (excuse the pun) fine art. But knowledge is power, and knowing my pattern of behaviour I have learnt to start and finish a painting as quickly as possible, to keep going when it's going well and to never (ever) take it down off of the easel when it's incomplete.

Relegation to the dark corner of my studio where incomplete paintings go to die is kinda like a point of no return. My paintings know that if they go there, the only way they're coming back is to be stripped down and painted over... this tends to happen when I've bought shoes instead of art supplies and my newly found state of 'broke' forces me to.

Funnily enough, some of my best work has come to fruition on the base of an old work. I think it's cos those canvases stubbornly refuse to back to the corner and have big dreams... dreams of actually being signed, lovingly wrapped up, sent to the bright lights of a gallery to be 'ooh-ed and aah-ed' over by passers by, and ultimately (the cherry on top of a perfectly frosted martini glass's rim) to be awarded the 'red dot' seal of approval – to be sold.

And, obviously, that's my wish for each painting I complete, too.

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