Storms And Stress – Kathy From KeppenArt

Are you a worrier?

Do storms cause you stress?

Are those weather storms or issues in life that we metaphorically call storms that might cause you stress?

Unfortunately I tend to be a worrier and even the smallest life issue can cause me stress.

Last year I decided to participate in the Personal Art Challenge on Fine Art America that required a new work of art to be created and posted every single day.  Normally that type of pressure would have caused me a lot of stress.  But there were stress-reducing elements to the challenge.

In that challenge I could take off a maximum of 30 days for illness, travel or for any reason really.  Those days could be consecutive or not, my choice.  I could also use a different theme and a different medium any of those days.  For example one day could be a digital creation of a snowman, the day after that could be a photograph of an indoor still life and the third day could be an abstract or even a hand drawn image.  My choice every day of the medium I wanted to use and the subject matter of my image.

This week, after worrying and stressing over the terms of a new challenge, I signed up for another year long but very different one. 

This new challenge only requires one image per week.  We have an entire week to create that image.  The caveat, however, is that we must use the same medium the entire 52 weeks.  That’s right.  No changing from photography to painting or drawing to digital.  The medium we choose to use for Week One  is the medium we will have to use the entire year.

It gets even more restrictive as there is only one theme the entire 52 weeks.  The theme is The World Outside.

Now, all of you who know me know that I am basically an outdoor lover…as long as it’s warm or hot outside!  I have also become quite the hermit not venturing out of this apartment complex. I suspect that I will be here in Northern Alabama in this complex throughout another winter and it will be anything but warm or interesting outside the majority of this winter.

I wanted to join the challenge but worried about weather and always having to produce an acceptable photograph that would be interesting. I stressed over not having the confidence to post acceptable traditional artworks, that is painting or hand drawing, every single week.

This new art challenge has presented itself at a time when I have also been struggling with faith concerning my future.  A challenge to take place in the coming year, “the future”, and my concern, worry and stress about my faith in the future happening at the same time.

Co-incidence? I think not!

I invite you to follow me in the next 52 weeks as I look for eternal hope in the future by photographing The Outside World as I see it around me wherever I happen to be.

Join me as I learn to have more faith in my future, more faith in my photographer’s eye and more faith in my ability to be vulnerable to show you even the crappiest of my creations if I experience an entire “off” week.   

The featured image is the one that I chose (after taking over 100 photographs of several different subjects) for Week One of this present challenge. You can view a larger version and read the description for the image here: