This challenge was a great way to start out the new year! I really enjoyed making my painting a priority this month, because the last couple months had been about building this new website, preparing for the studio tour, then for the exhibition in Paris, then Christmas with my family and so I was craving time at the easel.

Doing the challenge in the public eye was a wonderful way to hold myself accountable, but also it made it easy to carve out the time because friends and family knew this was my priority this month. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up now, and things to catch up on, so February is promising to be just as busy as January. However, I’ve decided to build on this experience by posting a “painting in a day” once a week on this blog. Starting on Thurs February 6th.

Leslie Saeta, the artist who initiated this challenge, asked for feedback from the 400 artists taking part. She did a podcast on it yesterday, on her internet radio show Artists helping Artists and she read my response – it’s at the 18:31 mark. If you’re an artist and you haven’t come across this resource before, I recommend the AHA show as something to listen to while you paint – second to music of course.

It was funny to hear Leslie remark that I “should be a writer”, because I’ve found that one of the things that came out of this was I gave in to blogging. Each day I’d write my thoughts at the time of posting, with no preconceived plan, and no time to edit beyond a quick read through or two. Normally I do this type of writing as part of my creative process, and no-one else sees it. However, I’ve received some great responses to the writing, and I think in the long run blogging does enrich my work by allowing me to present a wider view of my artistic production.

So thank you everyone for following, for taking the time to keep me company on this journey and giving encouragement by way of commenting, sharing and best of all, investing in my art!

See a slideshow of all of the paintings here.