The illusive best medium

I've recently changed my blog description to "..follow me on my search for the illusive best medium." because I realized that I have been chasing that Best Medium for me all of my life. It's been a long life. 

I started scribbling on old cards and photos with a pencil, moved on to crayons and chalk and colored pencils and finally paints. All kinds of paints. I studied weaving and printmaking and scuplting and ceramics but my best place was two dimensional art. 

I don't have any of my early art. It was all tossed by me and my mother. My first painting experience was paint by numbers and with those paints I painted this double portrait of my mother's dog, Cookie. He was a Gemini, like me, so I painted him as twins. I have no canvas so I used a piece of thick paper I had laying around. My mother framed it and it hung in her living room for years.

The color is wild. I knew nothing about color theory although I had the blue/orange contrasting colors down pat.  The image was drawn freehand.  I was very good at drawing. Even better than I am today. I was 17.

These are life drawings I drew during my freshman year intro to drawing class. I was 18. A simple graphite pencil drawing on newsprint. Fifty three years later, rolled up and kept out of the sunlight, they are still in pretty good condition. 

Most of the work I did was in graphite. I dropped out of college and went to a medical school (not college) to become a lab technician. Moved to Florida; ended up doing office work and moved back to New Jersey.  It was several years before I seriously studied art again, I was in my thirties. But I lacked confidence in my ability to support myself with my art so I went to library school where I found a way to support myself, help people and use my creative side.  But still; I just want to be a full-time artist. Now, I'm a caregiver, a part-time librarian and a part-time artist. Art is my passion and my sanity. My one regret is that I gave up on myself and didn't pursue visual art in my teens. I wonder how much better I would be today; what avenues I would  have pursued; how the energy of other your creative minds would have spurred me on. 

I've always been good with technology. Not genius good but good, better than many so using software to create composition and cameras and editing software to create YouTube videos was my next step to share my art. There's certainly a learning curve but I've picked up a lot in the past 3 years. I sell a bit here and there; sometimes folks learn something from my videos; sometimes I learn something from other people's videos. To see what I've been doing for the past 3 years just go to my YouTube channel:www.youtube.com/@joanmansson .

If any of this post sounds like a pity party please know that it's not meant to. I'm an artist. A painter, a draftsman. Whether I'm a great artist or a mediocre artist, I'm an artist in search of my own Best Medium and I'm determined to find it. In the meantime, I'm having a great time. A zen time. An exciting time.