Blood, Sweat and Tears

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
                                                   Mikkail Baryshnikov

It's amazing how two great minds think alike.  Yesterday my friend, Janet, posted on her blog exactly what has been playing around in my mind.  Neither of us have listed or tried to sell any of our original mixed-media art, and in my case, I've never listed any of my original watercolors.  Why, because Janet said it best "They're my babies".  An original vs a print has almost no comparison (unless you have a giclee print of your artwork, particularly watercolor).  Let's face it, the original literally has hours of our work, blood, sweat and tears all rolled together into it.

But just how much longer can I keep holding out.  I mean, there's only so much room to store my finished pieces, and not everything I've painted goes with my decor.  When I chose to keep my original, shown below, I literally redecorated our entire family room so it would look nice with my painting...

I was going through a period of self-discovery and finding peace in my life a number of years ago when I read through a book by Elaine St. James titled Simplify Your Life.  One of her recommendations for parting with belongings is to think of the joy it will bring to their next owner.  This really has made it easier to let go of certain items when the mood of decluttering has hit me.  Now what I need to do is to take her words of wisdom and transpose them to my original art.  I just know that the owners of these pieces will receive so much more joy than I could give them by just letting them hang around me.  Now, can I put my words to practice? 

I'm in the process of listing new items for my etsy shop and  I'm going to TRY and list a few of my originals within this coming week.  It's truly time to start letting some of them go!