Have you ever used a Kanban board? I use Trello to track all my projects. When I quit my full-time job to paint, I knew that it would be difficult to quantify what success meant in this new phase of my career. So before I jumped, I set a few goals for myself. All these metrics were concrete mile markers, guide posts, and few outrageous hopes. I wrote my goals down as cards in Trello, on a board called “goals and dreams.” The board usually sits unopened right beside the board where I track my family crest orders.
Some of those goals got re-evaluated and moved to a list of things that I’m not sure I want anymore. A few have been ticked off or moved to different lists. But there is one big dream in particular that will move this weekend to my “have achieved” list. It’s been sitting on my “goals and dreams” board for as long as the board has existed.
I will fly out of Greenville in two days to St Louis, MO to take a watercolor workshop with Carol Carter. Carol is an internationally recognized watercolor artist who owns and operates her own gallery. She is represented by galleries nationwide and has been featured in a variety of publications and prominent collections. I have been following her art for years and she’s one of my biggest art heroes.
And this weekend, I will meet her in person. We’ll eat dinner together, work together, and I’ll learn all that I can about her and the amazing work that she creates. It’s an expensive trip for me, but my work is worth it. The things that I learn from her might change my work, but they will definitely change the way I see myself. I’m worth the investment and I can’t wait for this weekend. I can’t wait to mark this huge dream as “have achieved.”
I am grateful to everyone for following this art journey with me. I think when people look at my career so far, they see a lot of dreams, passion, and hope. And maybe that will inspire them even more than my art could.
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Since I want to focus on creating beautiful art, I’ll let someone else handle the manufacturing, shipping, and delivery.I’ll sell templates, downloads, and of course, my original art on my own site. I’ll still work with a few trusted partners to create things like canvas art and cell phone cases to sell on my own site, but my plan is to shift a lot of the products to places like Redbubble and Zazzle so my international customers can have a better experience with my art.
The CASE actaims to make it easier and more affordable for artists and copyright holders to assert authorship rights if their work is infringed. They could go to small-claims court or a regional court to file a dispute. I still hope that it's a long time before I have to go to battle for my rights as a creator, but I'm grateful that there are other organizations campaigning to make the process easier for creatives like me.
