Goals are important when doing any activity. They’re especially important if you intend on accomplishing anything substantial. The hard part is planning out these goals. For me especially, I’ve been struggling with the long term direction I want to ultimately go with my art.

My current plan for the future has finally come about after long hours of contemplation as well as a fortunate encounter with another artist.

It all started on a random day wondering around Helper, Utah with my husband a kids. Most of the shops downtown where unfortunately closed that day, but we decided to window shop anyway. One shop stopped me in my tracks with a number of stunning landscapes. As luck would have it, it was open, so we went in. After drooling over all of the stunning paintings, I came across the artist himself, Steven Lee Adams, at the back of the shop in the act of creating another beautiful painting.

We had a very encouraging conversation about art while he painted, and I walked away from his gallery that day inspired to get my butt into gear. He owns his own gallery, full of his own work and paints for a living. And not only just making a living, but being a part of a community of people passionate about art. That is what I want. My anxiety so frequently gets in the way of social interactions that I forget how enjoyable it is to converse with people about art and be a part of a community.

So with a long term goal in mind, I have to ask myself how to get there. Some of my current goals seem a bit lofty, but it’s hard to achieve big if you don’t dream big.

Long Term Goals

• Become proficient at plein air painting – ultimate goal being to participate in the Moab Plein Air Art Festival
• Paint larger – complete a series of large 16×20 to 24×30 paintings
• Cultivate a relationship with the local gallery and submit work
• Make 2-3K a month on art sales via Moab Made, craft show vending, online sales, and gallery sales
• Consistently get 2K views a month on my website
• Develop a product line of prints, stickers, magnets, etc

Short Term Goals

• Get more creative with color – push existing colors to extremes, use unconventional colors ie use red in place of green or black
• Paint with different primaries – try specific palettes ie the Zorn palette
• When painting landscapes, push the atmospheric perspective, exaggerate it to push the depth of the painting per the advice of Steven Adams
• Paint larger – use larger canvases like 11×14 for a 30 day challenge
• Finish Josh’s gun commission
• Finish German Shepherd commission
• Compete in the Green River Museum art show in 2022
• Paint 5 days a week and post to this blog every Thursday
• Participate in Inktober 2021 and complete 30 paintings (skulls and flowers again, use more color)
• Participate in the September and January Strada Easel Challenge and complete all 30 paintings (food or flower subject)
• Participate in the MARC Holiday Art & Craft Fair 2021

I would love to hear about your own art goals. Please share them with me in the comments below. Thank you for reading. 🙂