31 Days of Starts

For March 15-April 15, encaustic teacher and leader Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch offered a series of daily classes called 31 Days of Starts! | Open Studio (pbsartist.com). Trish’s offerings (more at her site in the link), are always great and I always take something away. Trish taught at the very first encaustic workshop I took at the Grunewald Guild in Leavenworth, WA in 2011. During 2020 when Covid-19 shut everything down, Trish took her classes, workshops and classes online, just hoping for the best.

She found (and many of us who joined her found) that zoom could in fact be a wonderful place to co-work as artists. We all have workspaces filled with supplies that work for us, in places that work for us….packing up crates full of supplies for an art date at someone else’s shop is fun occasionally, but you don’t want to consistently disrupt your workshop and spend time packing and unpacking and finding and refinding your essential kit, either.

I participated in the 2020 Virtual EncaustiCamp, and loved joining Trish and the other teachers that summer from my own home (I even set up outdoors under a canopy and worked each day of the camp in my backyard!)

But back to April, 2023 (where we have yet to break 60 degrees here in the PNW). Trish offered this small daily practice class via zoom and I joined in with about sixteen other folks to call in each day. Some guided activities or meditations were included, but some days we just chatted for a bit, and then painted to music. The practice of rewriting my daily appointment, practicing the muscle of just showing up, taping the edges of a pieces of watercolor or canvas and getting started, even if just for 15 minutes, was magical.

Here are some of the photos from the month:

I was surprised by how much I got done, how many ideas came around, simply by showing up. I mean I’ve read the books, watched the TED talks, gone through The Artist’s Way, and so I know that yes, this is how it happens. But I was still surprised and encouraged. How much could you get done in 15 minutes a day at whatever thing you are trying to grow in?