This weeks posts are from Sue Stover! This is the sixth week in our collaborative exhibit share; in case you have missed  the previous I encourage you to take a look! Begin with Michelle Belto, follow on to Amanda JolleyCrystal NeubauerErin Keane and Shary Bartlett. Enjoy!

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What’s worse than facing a blank canvas? Facing 7 of them. I’m going to be honest here. I’d like to say that when I started these I had all these wonderful, peaceful thoughts of Seven Degrees of Connection, how inspired I was by the colors, our interconnectedness, blah, blah. But seriously, all I could think of was, “Duh, what am I going to do? How am I going to get this done? I’ve only been working in blue and white for the last nine months, now I’m supposed to use color? Why did I pick these colors? Why are these panels this size? Do these jeans make my butt look big?“ And so on. This was a hard assignment. I tried a few things. They were awful. They were scraped off. I tried a few more. Not much better. One of the things I continually struggle with is, “Is this me? What is me? Am I staying true? Am I being influenced by ______ (whatever catches my eye that particular day). I want to do this project justice but everything is just not coming out. I don’t think I am alone in these types of struggles. I think that as artists we are hyper-influenced by all our senses.

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Our motives and inspirations are stretched in every direction. It’s hard to focus. Or maybe it is just me. Just starting is sometimes the hardest part.