Fear, loathing, and painting faces

Today I was thinking about Trust and Fear. Specifically how they relate to me as an artist and the risks that I do and do NOT take in my art.  This thought pattern came from my ecourse I am taking from Kelly Rae.  It is challenging me to rethink my process, open up old wounds, confront my weaknesses head on, and challenge my comfort zone.  So I am terrified to try to paint people again.  I havnt done so since 1993, when I left art school for the "real world." I keep myself from doing people because I know that I will have to face the reality that I am not as good as I used to be.  That perhaps my art is (gasp!) bad.  I cant keep doing this though.  If I am really to move forward I have to put myself out there and take a risk and make (gasp!) bad art, to allow room for the good art to peek through and, hopefully, take over.

So I did this painting...

Its just a start.  The girl needs a lot of work, esp in the face, and I am not sure exactly where I was going with it, but it will come to me along the way I suppose.  I wanted to try using alcohol on the paints to make them run, and went a bit overboard.  I really like how the flowers turned out, but the girl... not so much.  I'll try again and show you what I end up with.


Then I wanted to do something really free.  So I employed my 2 year old son Israel, a budding artist i tell you.

He LOVES painting with momma, so we got all set up and did some collage/painting (which involves me squirting paint onto the cardboard in color palettes that I like, him having a party with the paintbrush on it, while I slap down collage pieces in between his brush strokes.
Once they are all dry and done, I'll post pics of them.