koukla carolyn

Leaf, face down; ink and colored pencil; Carolyn Pappas, 2008

Leaf, face up; graphite; Carolyn Pappas, 2008

“The artist must find an environment, a pattern of living, that will protect his or her energies: the art must be cultivated, must be given priority.”

“A journal as an experiment in consciousness. An attempt to record not just the external world, and not just the vagrant, fugitive, epemeral ‘thoughts’ that brush against us like gnats, but the refractory and inviolable authenticity of daily life: daily-ness, day-ness, day-lightness, the day’s eye of experience.”

-Joyce Carol Oates  

I’ve been reading The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982, although I haven’t read much of her fiction writing except for a few short stories for college. I love reading about her process and the struggles she had with balancing her day job of being a college professor with her writing demands. It reminds me a lot of how I feel with my artwork. I have recently been really driving myself to draw daily, even if only for an hour after work. It does invigorate me and I enjoy tracking my progress on a little grid that I keep. I’ve been trying to really challenge myself even if that means making a lot of drawings that I would never post. I think there’s really no way that I will ever improve unless I take some risks and try to do something different.

Organic Root Beer Bottle, neocolor II crayons in watercolor sketchbook, 2008

Daisies, black pitt pens in sketchbook, 2008

This weekend I ended up being very productive, but not in terms of art. It seems like I did all kinds of things except doing artwork. Today I cooked an unbelievable quantity of food (scones, macaroni and cheese and a big batch of oatmeal), went shopping and cleaned my bathroom. I put drawing off until the very end and now I am do tired I don’t think I can do much more. For some reason my right arm has been aching for the past two days. Yesterday I was feeling sort of fearful to do any drawing for fear of making it worse but today I did a lot of manual labor and my arm doesn’t feel worse for the wear. I think that I have just been trying to avoid things that have been bothering me lately, sort of like my TMS days.