Lately, I feel called small – called to the humble, beautiful, gentle things. These are the simple, significant, lovely parts of our lives.

I want to paint those things – our food; our little objects, idols and items; our intimate moments.

I want to paint the things that feel like pauses in our day.

I want to worship at the altar of tiny loves.

Every Tuesday, new tiny paintings will be posted and will be for sale. They’ll all be either 4?x6? or 5?x7? and they’ll all be priced between $75 and $100 (+ shipping).

To see the rest of the Tiny Gems, they all live here: Tiny Gem Shop

Today’s gem…

Study: Poppies 5"x7" oil on unstretched canvas © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012

When I arrived in France last May, it was at the end of the poppy season. One of my first nights there, walking through the town, I spotted these poppies peering over their stone wall from the garden behind. I loved the gorgeous red against the rich blue of the sky, shining one final time before fading away. The next day when I went past again, they were gone.

$90.00 CDN + shipping

This.

The bottom line is spirituality means something that touches you and can touch other people as well. It’s the idea that art is a kind of mirror. You create something in a very selfish way and then when you release it into the world, it becomes a mirror. If other people see themselves reflected back in what you’re doing, then there is a sense of touching people. Touching people means making people understand that they’re not alone in feeling the emotions they’re feeling. In that sense, spiritual music is about making people feel they are part of a collective consciousness. None of the things we feel in this world are unique to us, no matter how bad or good they may feel.

(from an interview with musician Steven Wilson on Innerviews)

Yes. I don’t think I could have said it better myself.

Lauren (a work in progress) - 11"x14" oil on unstretched canvas. © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012

Pencil Study: Jesse, 11"x14" pencil on paper. © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012

I get a lot of concerned feedback about my choice to be a representational artist.

People worry that I’m not “fully expressing myself”. They wish I would just “let loose” and really “pour myself into the work.” I wrote about this in more depth a while ago here, along with offering tips on giving advice to other artists.

But today, I don’t want to talk about why people make comments like this, or how to deal with them. I want to tell you why I’m madly in love with painting realistically.

My decision to be a realist artist is not a common one. In a world where free-flowing expression is popular and beloved, it can seem like realism is really just perfectionism, a desire to slavishly copy what’s in front of them.

And I admit, I’m sure that’s true in some cases.

But I am not a photorealist. I don’t want my work to look exactly like a photograph (copying a photograph note for note doesn’t really work anyways, due to things like distortion.) I give my creativity free-reign when creating a piece – I move elements around, I cut things out, add things; I change colours, intensify them, cool them down or warm them up.

And it’s not that I don’t have respect and admiration for abstraction or more expressionistic art forms. Like any kind of art, I love some of it, hate others and feel indifferent about the rest. It’s a taste thing.

My choice for realism though isn’t about disliking abstract art or wanting to copy photos.

It’s about expressing the vision in my head.

I see all of these moments of peace, beauty and aliveness that surround us. I am fascinated and mesmerized by the shapes and colours, the glory of so many simple things.

Tell me, have you ever sat down and looked at the world around you? I mean really looked. Yes, there is the obvious beauty of a sunset, but what about something really common, like your hands?

Just for a second, forget that it’s your hand, and all of the hang ups you have about it. Just look at it. Look at the beautiful shapes that create it. Look at the colours – the pinky-red of the knuckles, the blue green of your veins shimmering beneath the surface, the delicate pink of your fingernails. Look at all of the colours within the skin itself – orange, yellow, purple, green, blue.

There is a whole world of magnificence within the palm of your hand. Literally.

That’s how I see the whole world. That’s why I love painting my Tiny Gems so much because even within the simple objects of our everyday lives, there is a delectable visual feast. I get quite giddy with excitement.

My vision is completely rooted in the physical world. I have never once felt that I wasn’t expressing myself fully because everything that I want to express and explore is right here in front of me. Nature and the natural world is pretty freaking amazing in my opinion and I could spend 4 lifetimes just getting started on all of the things that I want to say, and all of the things that I want to show you.

I want to show you the world through my eyes – all of the beauty, all of the joy, all of the power and peace, the fragility and bliss.

I am mesmerized and humbled by the world that we live in. I love it. And so I paint what I love. Hopefully, I can help you love it a little more too.

Anxiety and depression. Not something we all talk about around the dinner table.

And yet, over a third of us have experienced one or the other, and often both.

I’d like to introduce you to the In Good Company Project.

This is a wonderful site run by my lovely friend, Kate Harding. In her words:

“The In Good Company project aims to help dispel that illusion of isolation. How? Simply by sharing our stories of depression and anxiety. Let’s get this subject out of the closet!

If you’ve experienced depression or anxiety, I invite you to share your story. Blog about it, or vlog about it, and then come and share your story here.

Let’s build a collection of our experiences. Our collected stories will show the vast range of experiences that exist within the general area of depression and anxiety, and the vast range of approaches available to help with them.

And most importantly, it’ll let people all over the world know that if they’re going through depression or anxiety, they’re in really good company.

Let’s spread a little togetherness, and a little understanding.”

I can’t recommend this site enough. The stories are beautiful and human and hopeful.

I’m proud to say that I have a guest post up there today, talking about my experiences with anxiety, depression and the shame that comes with it, in the hopes that my story might help someone else.

Please be gentle and kind, as this is vulnerable territory for me. I’d prefer it if you could just hold onto any advice that you want to offer as well, since that isn’t why I wrote the post. I wrote it to share a human experience.

Click here to read it: The Hardest Part of All

Lately, I feel called small – called to the humble, beautiful, gentle things. These are the simple, significant, lovely parts of our lives.

I want to paint those things – our food; our little objects, idols and items; our intimate moments.

I want to paint the things that feel like pauses in our day.

I want to worship at the altar of tiny loves.

Every Tuesday, new tiny paintings will be posted and will be for sale. They’ll all be either 4?x6? or 5?x7? and they’ll all be priced between $75 and $100 (+ shipping).

To see the rest of the Tiny Gems, they all live here: Tiny Gem Shop

Today’s gems…

When I want to celebrate, sometimes I just throw a tea party. You can blame my mother, who despite living in Canada for over 30 years is still an English woman at heart. The elegance and loveliness of a cup of tea and a cookie, scone or slice of cake has been instilled in me from a young age.

And then of course, I fell in love with Jane Austen and Regency era England and that was the end of that.

There is just nothing like a cream tea, my friends.

So it’s not surprising that some of my tiny paintings were going to be of the little bits of tea party I try to bring into my daily life. Anyone who knows me knows about the insane amounts of tea I drink on a daily basis. And my love of the cookie. (This is making me want a cookie right now.)

So I bring you….

The Teaspoon

Study: Teaspoon - 4"x6" oil on canvas board. © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012

$75.00 CDN + shipping

Sugar Cookies

Study: Sugar Cookies, 5"x7" oil on canvas board. © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012

$95.00 CDN + shipping

I painted these in the same week. I think I’m going to have to add a painting of a teacup in here as well, to complete the set. And perhaps a teapot as well. (My teapot is shaped like an elephant. It’s so awesome.)

Next week? Poppies. And maybe shiny candy wrappers.

Want more gems? Click here to see the rest!

France, I'm coming back to you! (Also, this will probably be a painting soon.)

As I promised way back in December, I would be posting my income at the end of every month, since I needed some accountability to make myself step up.

December went better than November, and January went much, much better than December.

Of course, I had to pay for my tuition, so I only had all of this money for one hot minute, but dooood, I’m going to France! So who cares!

Here’s a breakdown of January’s numbers:

Web Design & Virtual Assistant freelancing = $1095.60
Art (commissions + art & print sales + Sketches from the Road sign ups + donations) = $2386.47

TOTAL= $3482.07

This is almost 3x as much as I made in December (see December numbers here), which is a pretty excellent feeling. I paid tuition and had money left over to take care of myself properly, which I like.

In February, I need to double that sum. I don’t have as much to pay for this month, but I need to start socking money away for France.

I need to purchase plane tickets and a hotel in Paris for my brief stop there. (I need jet lag recovery time before anyone expects me to be intelligent.)

But I need money to order art supplies to have a one night show here in Charlottetown. I also need money to get my stuff back to Ontario so my parents can store it for me. (Hi, Mum & Dad!) These things need to be paid for pretty soon, so I want to know that I have the money set aside.

I’m hoping to be able to put $3000 into savings this month, as well as purchase plane tickets, book a hotel and obviously pay my rent. That’s the plan, Stan.

How am I going to accomplish this grand goal, you ask? One foot in front of the other, until I get there. It worked in January. Hopefully it’ll work in February, too.

Lately, I feel called small – called to the humble, beautiful, gentle things. These are the simple, significant, lovely parts of our lives.

I want to paint those things – our food; our little objects, idols and items; our intimate moments.

I want to paint the things that feel like pauses in our day.

I want to worship at the altar of tiny loves.

Every Tuesday, new tiny paintings will be posted and will be for sale. They’ll all be either 4?x6? or 5?x7? and they’ll all be priced between $75 and $100 (+ shipping).

To see the rest of the Tiny Gems, they all live here: Tiny Gem Shop

Today’s gem…

I’ve had this painting sitting in my head for a while. I took this photo my first week in France, of the town I was staying in. I still remember the way the sunlight shimmered as it hit the warm tiled rooftops. This weekend, I finally sat down to start creating it.

Study: French town © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012. 4"x6" oil on unstretched canvas

I love the way this painting feels layered. As I wrote in my newsletter yesterday (you’re signed up for that, right?):

“I wanted to capture the delicious warmth of the sunlight hitting the trees and those rooftops. I wanted to capture the layered feeling of a town this old – the bridge off to the right was built in the 9^th century. Walking amongst the walls of this town was like walking through layers of history, from the castle on the hill destroyed by Napoleon, to the Roman arch left behind on another narrow street.

Every rock, every wall, every house is steeped in history. There is such a rich tapestry of humanity here and oddly enough that’s how I see the town – a patchwork quilt of colour and shape.”

Working away at the easel...

I don’t know about the rest of you creative folks out there, but finding a balance between art-making, marketing and admin is sometimes the hardest job of all.

I love making the art, but without the marketing and the admin, it’ll never go out the door. I get torn between love of one thing and respect for the other.

And lately, the balance between art and business has been tipped much further in the business direction. That needs to correct itself.

So I’m working on developing a schedule that honours both the need to deal with the business and also the need to make the art.

I thought I’d share this process, just in case it helps someone else. Feel free to steal my schedule!

Here’s the criteria I need my daily schedule to meet:

1. Art needs to happen during daylight hours 95% of the time, because my work lately is lit by natural light. I’m also most awake and most alert during the day. A night painter, I am not.

2. My writing (blogs, newsletters etc.) needs to happen before I start making art for the day. Once I’ve switched into the visual creative part of my brain, it’s a struggle to go back to my verbal creativity.

3. I need to set aside time for admin tasks, like email, formatting blog posts & newsletters, and bookkeeping. This needs about an hour of love every day for it to be kept manageable and not rage out of control. These kinds of tasks have a strong tendency to rage when neglected.

4. I need time to do client work for my VA & web design clients. This needs a couple of hours a day as well.

5. Somewhere in there, I need time to eat, and probably run errands some days. This means that I need to determine optimal errand running time, so that if I need to run an errand one day, I know when I’m going to do it. It also means I know when I’m going to schedule client appointments as well.

The reason that I’m interested in creating a schedule for myself is that I function better when I chip away at projects rather than trying to do them all in one big rush. (I think this is pretty true for everyone.) But it’s also better for my health, because it’s a form of pacing.

I know myself well and I’m a last-minute-deadline kinda gal if I let myself be, and then I get burnt out. Not a fun cycle. I’d like to change that.

I also know that this schedule is not going to be set in stone and some days, it’s gonna get thrown out the window. Deadlines happen. Surprises happen. Life – it happens.

But by creating a useful, flowing schedule as a jumping off point, most days will see me puttering along at a steady pace, tackling all of the things I need to so that my business and creative life run smoothly.

It also means that the days when I wake up and I don’t really know what I’m doing, I have this schedule to fall back on. Routines and habits can be useful like that.

Making the schedule

Let’s say my usual wake up time is somewhere between 6:30-7am. I always have to get up and make a cup of tea first. That’s mandatory. This is usually when I journal and meditate. This works for me, so I’m going to keep that in my schedule.

So let’s say, from 7-8am is meditation and journaling time.

My studio is east-facing, so the early morning light is variable – not great for painting or lighting my still lifes. I find that by 10am the light has evened out, and I can start working.

So…let’s say from 8am to 10am is writing time. I can quickly check email for emergencies, but everything else can get left till later. This is also a pretty good time for eating breakfast. (Remember, self? Breakfast? That thing that you don’t forget until 11am and then suddenly discover that you’re cranky?)

At 10am, painting starts. I have about 4 hours till the light fades too much for me to be able to see my subject matter properly. (I’m obviously dealing with winter hours. In a couple months, all of this will change.)

So I could schedule my painting hours from 10-2pm. Somewhere around 1pm, there’s a 20 minute break for lunch and tea. Then there’s a good 15-20 minutes clean up time at the end.

Then there needs to be some web design and client work scheduled in. Let’s say from 2:30-4:30 I do web design, run errands or meet with clients (if possible).

Then from 4:30 to 5:30, I answer email, catch up with accounting, format blog posts and newsletters and take care of other general admin tasks, such as packing up paintings to be shipped the next day.

How my days will look:

Wake up – 8am: Journaling and meditation (and if I’m feeling dangerous…yoga.)

8am – 10am: Writing & breakfast

10am – 2pm: Studio time (which means no internet!)

2:30 – 4:30pm: Client work, errands, client meetings, etc.

4:30 – 5:30pm: Email, admin, etc.

5:30pm – Bedtime: Relax. Watch movies. Eat delicious food. Hang out with Jesse and friends. Read trashy romance novels. Y’know – recuperate so you can approach the next day with your best foot forward.

This feels like a good, manageable, steady schedule. I have to juggle so many activities in my day, that I want to make sure I spend time with all of the them. Otherwise, one thing usually comes out on top and the other activities get neglected and then I have to make a mad rush to finish them all.

For some people, a schedule isn’t the solution. But for myself, I find that I need to create containers of space and time for the tasks that I need to do on a regular basis. A schedule helps me stay organized and focused on what’s important (and less likely to get distracted by Facebook.)

And since it’s a schedule created around my optimal functioning times and with eyes wide open – some days, my schedule will get trashed – it won’t be some horrid slave master driving me along with a whip.

Instead, it’s a system put in place to support me in doing my best work, in a way that feels manageable and enjoyable.

What about you?

Do you have a schedule for balancing your business & creativity? Or are you anti-schedule? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

So I’ve decided to just go with my instinct and celebrate how much I love making tiny paintings. They’re so sweet! And colourful! And fun!

I feel called small – called to the humble, beautiful, gentle things. These are the simple, significant, lovely parts of our lives. I want to paint those things – our food; our little objects, idols and items; our intimate moments.

I want to paint the things that feel like pauses in our day.

I want to worship at the altar of tiny loves.

Every Tuesday, new tiny paintings will be posted and will be for sale. They’ll all be either 4″x6″ or 5″x7″ and they’ll all be priced between $75 and $100 (+ shipping).

To see the rest of the Tiny Gems, they all live here: Tiny Gem Shop

And now for the gems…

I painted this little red pepper during the last episode of Watching Paint Dry. Ain’t he sweet? I love the shiny red of the skin against the antique white fabric.

Study: Red Pepper © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012. 5"x7" oil on canvas board, 2012

Sugar Cookies © Sarah Marie Lacy, 2012. 5"x7" oil on canvas board, $95

This is it. Today’s the day. My tuition is due by the end of the day, and as the fancy pink graphic below shows, I’m just $363 from my goal.

BAM!

That feels good.

As I wrote the other day, I’ve been working hard to make sure that my journey is one of love, not fear – that my actions are always rooted in love of myself and love of my right people (hey, gorgeous) and love of my art. Not fear of failure.

And it’s been wonderful – I have been happier, things have flowed better and I haven’t worked myself into the ground.

But can we just pause here a minute and talk about the other side of this?

Just because my actions and my choices have come from a place of love does not mean that I have not been afraid.

I have still had moments of panic. I have a low, throbbing headache today from holding all of my fear and tension in my terminally clenched jaw.

I have to constantly defend my position of love. Yes, it’s brought greater ease to my work, my marketing, my money and my life, but it’s not been easy to stay there.

This is a new way of living for me. I have to break old habits, write new ones. I have to choose my commitment to love about 8 million times a day. I have to keep asking myself, “If I made a choice out of love right now, what would that choice be?”

Sometimes acting from love can feel conflicted. Do I choose to act from love of myself today, and write this post, share my words here, and on social media and then take the afternoon off to relax and rest my aching head?

Or do I act from love of my art, and keep pushing till the end of the day?

But I don’t know if the choice is really a choice. Would hovering over my computer for the rest of the day really help the money show up? Or would it be better to shine my light, share my words and then let them speak for themselves, without pushing and fretting?

Somehow, I think option 2 makes the most sense.

And yet, there are deep knots of tension

“What if I don’t make the rest of the money by the deadline? What then?” whispers the fear.

Debt. Borrowing. Credit cards. I’ll do what I have to do to pay the tuition. Not going to France is not an option.

“But then we failed!” wails my inner perfectionist.

But did we? We paid the tuition. We’re going to France. We’ll pay the money back. The goal itself was accomplished.

True, more debt is not something that I want. (There’s still the business of that $12,000 I owe from last year.)

And there’s the matter of the other $56,000 I need over the next 2 years. (Next month? Plane tickets, baby!)

It’s a big dream. It’s scary. It’s the biggest, craziest thing I’ve ever tried to do. And my head, literally, aches with the hugeness of it.

What’s important here?

As tempting as it is to sit here and worry about the next $56000, that’s not really helpful. And it’ll probably make my headache worse.

The only thing that I can do right now is keep putting one foot in front of the other. One step at a time. I can’t take care of tomorrow until I’ve taken care of today.

I find this infinitely comforting. I am only responsible for the here and now. I only have to do my best with what I’ve got. I would never do less and I can’t do more.

What’s my best today?

My best today is to write this post, and ask for your help.

My best today is to give you and me permission to let the rest of it go. You did your best. I did my best. Could I have done more? Probably. But quantity and quality are not equal. I could have done more, but I could not have done better.

I need to refuel. I’m dying to spend some time in my kitchen, baking scones and Welsh tea cakes. I’m dying to just sit and draw for hours. I’m dying to finish that little red pepper painting from yesterday.

I need to drink several cups of green tea, my version of aspirin. I need to keep drinking water. I need to eat some food and take a nap and share a little on social media and maybe send one last note to my Notes from the Studio subscribers and subscribers to last year’s Sketches from the Road.

And then at 4pm EST, I will pay my tuition, with the money that I have and, if necessary, whatever I have to borrow.

The rest of the weekend, I am unplugging! I will spend time with one of my best friends, go to the mall and try on OUTRAGEOUS outfits, eat some of my baking, make slow-roasted pork, draw and draw and draw and paint and snuggle with my love while watching movies.

I will celebrate the beginning of my journey. I will celebrate my hard work. I will celebrate the love that has filled me this past week or so.

And on Monday, I will start work on Phase 2. By putting one foot in front of the other, doing my best every day and letting the rest of it go. By choosing love and always moving forward, even if it’s just an inch.

No fireworks, or fanfare and no awards will be handed out.

But I will get to France. And every step will be made with love.

To me, that’s what matters most.

So!

I’m asking for your help. If you feel called to contribute, go check out the delightful page outlining my odyssey, why it’s so important and how you can join in. Click here!

If you know someone who needs to read this, or you just want to share it around, I would love that. You can use one of the awesome buttons below.