Balance
Balance
The trick in life, and in art, is finding the right balance between painting, day job, and play.
The day job is working as owner, art director, illustrator, graphic designer, web designer, videographer, manager, computer tech, editor, sales person, screen printer, vinyl cutter, accountant, advertiser, barista and clean up crew. This is the daily regimen at Creative Bearings. Day-in-and day-out, I have to juggle the triumphs and woes of small company and find time to do artwork for my galleries.
Play time includes golf, flying, skiing (snowboarding) hiking and travel. Some of these things work well by bringing an easel along, or the laptop and stopping in at a cafe with internet, to take care of emails and small design projects.
Painting in oil, watercolor or acrylic, are all time consuming. They require being in the moment and concentrating on each brush stroke. The hours go by quick, but leave emails unanswered and design project deadlines sliding.
The thing that suffers is family time. In most cases we do stuff together as a family that involve play time. I golf with my daughter, Paula. I snow board with my son Pedro, and go flying and shooting with my son Diego. My wife loves hiking and travel, so we do those together when time allows. Lucy does not mind stopping and painting on location, where ever we are, and read a book or adventure around while I paint.
I find that doing some of each, everyday, brings the balance required. Spending time on business, then escaping for some play time and painting, prepping art or being creative between other projects makes small strides to the completion of new work for the galleries.
Like most people, too much of anything becomes stressful. If I work on too much website stuff for too long, I find I need to get out of the computer completely for a while. If I paint for days on end, I find it fun to work on a video editing project. But, if I get home at the end of my day, and I have completed 2-3 different styles of project (fine art, graphic design, screen printing) all in the same day, I feel accomplished. If I launch a website, create a logo and then go flying, then I am a champion of a life well lived (insert golf or hiking there too).
Play hard, Work hard, and love hard. That's the key to life balance.
- Gregory Effinger
