The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

I have failed at many things. The main thing is I did a lot of mediocre painting during art school and I have also written a lot of terrible poetry over the years. A whole helluva lot of mediocre artwork actually and a bit less mediocre poetry (as I am less experienced in that overall). I still fail at both art and poetry, although I fear it much more in art than I do in writing. I am a perfectionist when it comes to painting, but I am not a perfectionist in any other area of my life thank god. Failure is a necessary step to success and I believe that fully. I just wish in art I didn’t have such anxiety about it.

I didn’t write a poem or draw today. My brain is too filled with job interview questions to have room for creativity. The interview is today at 10:45 and they sent me the questions yesterday. This morning I got up at 2am and started working on note cards and at 7:30am I am going to start practicing answering the questions out loud. 

Tomorrow we leave for South Carolina at 5:30 in the morning so we have to be at the airport by 3:30am. That means we need to be out of the house at 3am in order to get to the airport. To give myself enough time to get ready I’m setting the alarm for 1am and going to bed at 7pm tonight. 

Because I’m not really enjoying doing abstract art (I really really tried to get into it but could not), I am going to try something else. I do want to be ready for Inktober next year so I am going to start studying anatomy. Lord knows I have enough books on it that I have barely touched. It gives me something concrete to do and a goal that is tangible. I’m going to start with hands and feet and focus on those in March. 

I think I am done with my PPE series. There’s not really much else I want to paint in that vein. I did quite a few and it feels like enough. I’m going to shift my attention to drawing and just do that for now. That and my poetry book will be the creative goals for the rest of the year.

I signed up for a non-credited course for national poetry writing month. You write a poem a day and share them with a group and at the end you put together a chap book. The class provides prompts but you aren’t required to use them (I could never work from a prompt as all my poetry comes out of the back of my brain). There isn’t any instruction, it’s more about accountability and the opportunity to share your work and hear other’s work. I would never take an instructional class on poetry. I did seven years of art school and that is enough college for me thank you very much. The last thing I need is the added anxiety of being a perfectionist in poetry as I already am one with painting and art school is what did that to me.