Shan Nilsen Eberhardt, artist

When it comes to art, I play a lot.

I drip ink in my coffee to see the swirls and clouds and end up painting the mixture  over my latest sketch to see what it will do to the pencil lines. Acrylic paint? Spit in it, mix it, add glue, put it in a bulb syringe, spray it: see what happens and then ash on the results.  Mixed media? I tend to get carried away with the ripping and burning and melting and end up with 5 times as much as I need for a small canvas and a scorch mark in my desk.  If I'm working late, chances are that I'll end up partially stripped, war painting myself in front of the mirror for my own amusement. (Who doesn't want to know what they'd look like with a blue torso??)   I play with things a lot. 

Sometimes my play is more intense, to be sure. It's the equivalent of the time when I was a kid that I constructed an obstacle course in a junk yard and spent the summer timing myself over and over. Old tires, a hot water heater, a truckbed cattle cage, a hay bale elevator and a beam across a stream and I wanted to see how many times I could tuck and roll between point A and point B and still destroy the Imperial Troops before they reached the base.   You can't call that anything but playing; but, friends, I was playing hard.  There are a lot of times now that I go at a canvas with the same thrill of fun but zoned in intensity, too. 

It is almost impossible to force yourself to "play" if you really consider the definition of that word, though. So for someone who connects so much of their passion for creating to the playful, tactile pleasure of the act, it is daunting to try to do without that natural rush. So when I'm "not feeling it"?   When it isn't fun?  The need to create is no less real but it's entirely too easy to let 2 months meander past while I refuse to sit my ass at the table. I get all overthinky about how "They" are Real Artists and I'm just a kid with an ink stained coffee mug.  I tell myself I "ought" to Create An Art; but I just look at pictures of my favorite old work and feel a pounding dread that I'll never make anything as good again. I start to think of it as a magic I may have lost.   

I've spent a good amount of time this winter sitting in the virtual corner, trying to still my mind and watching a bit. I watch the artists I admire, stalk their social media feeds, look at all the work they post.  In all artistic endeavors there's a common theme:    the artists I admire are "arting" all. The. Time. Every damn day they're tinkering at their craft, even if the results aren't earth shattering. They redo things until they like the final result. They scrap ideas and start over. But they keep arting. 

This is not magic. Art is not magic.  This is willingness to work. 

The question that has sent me back to the studio more and more often this winter is this: if I only create when it's easy and fun, am I an artist, or a hedonist with a penchant for color and form?

I like to play, but it isn't all I want to define me.  I want to be an artist.  Time to get back to work.