Regaining Focus Through Art: Out of Focus

This is obviously my first post. I am an artist going through a hard time right now with my family. My husband was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, had surgery which removed all of it, and is now struggling through chemotherapy. Ever since the devastating news I have had a very hard time focusing on anything, including art. But I have come to learn that artwork can still be made even when I have no focus. It's not artwork I usually do, but it's what is coming out now, so I'm just going with it. Who knows where it will lead. I honestly don't care. I just know I need to do it. This artwork might be the worst I have ever done or it might end up being the best. Only God knows.

These pieces will most likely be small, or at least much smaller than I have been doing, which has been quite large. Who knows though because I can never focus for too long on any one thing right now. Maybe I'll have a bunch going on at one time, or maybe I'll just do something small and quick just to keep my mind occupied. This blog will be where I chronicle this journey and the artwork that is produced.

This is the piece that started it all. It is a Mixed Media piece that remains untitled because I haven't figured out a name for it yet. It started with me throwing a bunch of coffee on a sheet of watercolor paper and just see what happened. Because I can't keep my focus I jumped from one medium to another, had absolutely no direction, and I honestly had no thought in it whatsoever. I was just keeping my hands busy and hoping to keep my mind busy as well. I have discovered that my mind is my worst enemy right now, causing fear to swell and overwhelm, so I try to keep my mind from being idle. I had to let the coffee dry so I went outside and built a snowman with my kids. The next day I threw on some watercolor paints, not even really caring where it went. I started seeing some weird forms take shape over the next couple weeks and I wasn't even sure I liked what it was looking like, but I kept at it because I really didn't care what happened. After the watercolor I used acrylic, then ink, then some more watercolor, then I threw on more coffee, went back to ink, used colored pencil, used graphite, and ended with ink.

So needless to say I don't know what to make of it, much less what to say about it. It's a piece that made itself. Or maybe it's what happens when a blank mind is let loose. We'll see what an unfocused mind will create next.