Dear diary, Help!

Pablo Picasso said that "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." If that is true, my 'diary' is not saying much that is good about me lately! I have a whole stack of unfinished (and maybe unfinishable) paintings staring me in the face when I walk into the studio.

Yesterday, I worked about an hour on a new piece, only to take it to the sink and wash the whole thing off.

I am thinking (hoping!?) that I am going through one of those 'creative growth stages' people such as Betty Edwards and Julia Cameron talk about. The kind where I will come out the other side, more creative and productive than ever.

The paintings in the gallery are selling, leaving bare spots on the walls that I am expected to keep filled. And, as I paint with oils, I can't just whip out a piece, frame it and take it out and put a sales tag on it. It will need drying time. So I'm in a heap of behind-ness!

I guess my problem is that summer has never been work time for me. When my boys were home and out of school, I took summers off from my work. And, even before that, when I was a school girl, summers were for hiding out from work with a good book. (If my mother saw me 'doing nothing' she felt obligated to find me something to do, so I just tried to make sure she didn't see me lolling about with a good book.) So maybe my work mind has decided to hide out from me, lest I try to give it something constructive to do.

Perhaps I should just give in to that growing stack of books on my nightstand, pour myself a tall glass of sun tea, and park myself in the porch glider with a good book for a day or two. Maybe while I am adventuring with Maisie Dobbs, my right brain will get the rest and inattention it seems to be needing, and I'll come out of this slump, ready to either finish those canvases and start my next tapestry or to pitch them in the trash and begin anew.