I spoke to a group of women a couple of weeks ago and my talk focused on creativity.  A few months before I was having drinks with a friend who is a designer and we were talking about what I should do next.  She said, “When you’re creative, you just have to see where the energy takes you.” I agreed with her sentiment, but I thought she was talking about herself.  I waited for the segue into her advice for me, then I realized that she thought I was creative.

It’s not how I thought of myself.  I thought of myself as organized, administrative, logical. This one conversation sent me down a path, less of discovery than recognition. I began to think about how we have these invisible tags safety-pinned to our psyche and how they steer us and inhibit us as we move through our lives.

But when I decorate or draw or paint, I often begin in insecurity.  I begin convinced that I won’t be able to do it, but that I can always tidy up whatever mess I make. This is how I felt after the daisies.  That the entire project was all wrong. That I could not do it.  That I was in over my head. Very clearly, I knew that I was not an artist.

What I did was not give up, but keep going.  I’m less fearless than stubborn. I realized later, that this adjective – creative – that I refused to give myself, was based less in reality than in a poorly defined concept of what it is to create.  As we look at paintings and the glossy pages of magazines, we forget that things do not always go well the first time.  The best outcomes are often the result of painting over, of trying again, of recognizing our shortcomings and giving it another go. What a shame it would have been to give up because of a few unfortunate daisies and never know the joy of having a pink dining room decorated with enormous blooms.

Bracelets I Cannot Afford is an on-going and irregular series of what are usually large and chunky things I would like to have wrapped around my wrist.  Last night I attended a very lovely cocktail party at Tivol (beautifully and deliciously catered by Jo Marie Scaglia) featuring the work of Marco Bicego.  Bicego’s pieces are lively and undeniably wearable.  The cases were two and three people deep.  I’ll work a little harder when it comes to jewelry and I did nudge my way in to see the wares.  There were lots of pretty things, but it was this bold and graphic bracelet that I circled to see three times.  Perhaps the article on Flora Crockett was still bouncing around my brain, but I wanted nothing more than to feel the links against my skin as the colorful stones winked back, reassuring me that the universe is often random and irregularity has its own appeal.

These may be the worst pictures I’ve ever taken, and I’ve taken some pretty poor ones in the last eight years.  I snapped these for my benefit – not so much to publish – but, we’re all friends here so what the hay.

 I’ve never liked pink.  Even as a girl I don’t remember liking pink, but suddenly about a year-and-a-half ago pink began to appeal.  She seemed warm and pretty and flattering instead of cloying and juvenile and ick. This is Ben Moore’s Queen Anne Pink, which is close to a Fowler-y pink, though less red (I think.)

I liked it, you know – the process.  I knew that I would.  Entirely unconstrained. I paint at night, when the house is quiet.  I should be tired, but I’m excited as I dip the brush in the can and pull one flat edge against the side, watching the excess fall back into the pail and fill the narrow trough that rings the rim.  

I loved the freedom of this project. When I painted the other mural, I worked close.  I was eye-to-eye with the blossoms and branches.  But this time, I stretched the brush up over my head as far as my hand would reach.  I loved the indulgence of moving my whole arm, of turning my wrist and watching the petals appear.

But I hated the daisies.  I hated them at first sight.  I kept thinking I would grow to like them. They were just as I’d imagined them to be, except that I thought they would delight me and I loathed them instead.  There was only one thing to do.  I painted over and started again.

Part III, the finale (far from grand) tomorrow.  (Really, it might be tomorrow.  Three posts in three days. Who knew?)

It all started last year down on the farm with Ann Marie Gardner and her Gucci dress.  Those hand-drawn (looking) flowers made me a little itchy to start messing with my walls again. I had wanted to paint the walls of my dining room, but did not want to repeat the mural I’d done before. It wasn’t until this flaxen-haired milkmaid appeared in her $2000 frock and Hunter boots that I knew what I wanted.

The product is engaging, but the editorial images have been a delight.  Seems, the whole process was a bit of a party.  “I had a blast working on the collaboration with Schumacher,” Miles told me.  “Dara Carponigro, [their creative director] is a design force and we saw eye-to-eye the whole way.”

Not completely altruistic, Miles reaped his own rewards. “Personally, I got to make a lot of fabric that I had longed for in the market, which doubled the fun. I suppose I am greedy!” he said.