Missing

I missed October.
All of it.
Where did it go?

I miss my palette knife.
And my oil paints.
My make-shift studio.
My college studio.

I miss the presence of art.
Surrounded by other art lovers and art critics.
Constantly feeding off of their thoughts and ideas and objections.

I miss having time to experiment,
Time to engage and lock myself into a new painting,
No limits, nowhere to be.

I wholeheartedly appreciate those two months I had off of work.
I pushed myself, I produced, I practiced techniques.
Now I'm two months into two part-time jobs,
Exhausted and out of practice.
This is an artist's constant struggle.
Finding the time between jobs, a social life, and family
To create and keep creating and promoting and showing and talking and smiling.
The balance that others may not ever have to experience.
What do non-creatives do in their free time?
What is it like to have free time?

In spite of all this,
I'm not going to lie and say I have new work.
Right now.
I do have five new paintings in the process of being completed.
Right in the middle of my studio.
AKA my bedroom floor.
I will push myself harder,
Because I'm good at it.
And I will be posting my new paintings soon.

For now though,
I still have several paintings hanging at Kitchen 319 in Glendora, NJ,
And I have a whole wall at Jack McShea's in Ardmore, PA.

Here's a local Philly artist that is making me miss these things.

Meet Gregory Prestegord.