It's Mushroom Time

Magic Mushroom (oil on canvas, 28 x 31 ins)

I confess I've been feeling like the cashier in the painting for days now. Mostly this is a follow-on from the end of the Figure 8 show. No sales and, despite positive comments from many well-meaning people, the inevitable draining away of confidence ensues. This is what Eric Maisel calls a meaning leak.

I should have rallied straight away, and got on with more painting - a meaning reinvestment - but those little hard-core paperwork projects are still staring at me from the dining table. I cleared one off today, but four more remain, and I can feel that ol' anxiety building. I'm constantly expecting something to go wrong.

Maybe creative people are the biologically anxious offspring of biologically anxious parents. Maybe anxiety runs in their families. Maybe they are psychologically "highly sensitive" and prone to anxiety because they are inundated by sense data. But it is more likely that the anxiety we see is the result of the heroic effort the creative person is is making trying to force life to mean. His brave efforts make him feel threatened at every turn, whenever he thinks about going into the unknown to create and whenever he tries to wrestle a new creation into existence

Eric Maisel Ph.D. - The Van Gogh Blues

Whether this is actually the case - and I find Maisel's arguments very persuasive - I know I have to get those last few bits of paperwork out of the way before I can start to feel OK again.