This blog has not seen any activity for more than 2 years...frightening.
Life just took over and I needed to work on things that are more important than to throw out some nice pictures and sharing my thoughts. I was forced to get my priorities straight and clean up my ‘artist life’ a little bit. I am still not done.
About 4 years ago, I felt, that I would need to change something in life and announced that I would reduce my Custom Painting Art activities for some years. People laughed at me – they were already a step further, locked into their particular life and had everything sorted out. Well, they did not know about all the projects and 'lifes' I had going at the time.
4 years is a long time, but meanwhile new challenges & opportunities came along, like my Tattoo Mentor Michael ‘Michel’ Huth, Marco Planting inviting me as a guest artist to his Kustom Kulture Show in Helsinki, meeting and befriending Fernando Oddone & the Japanese Pinstriping posse lead by ‘The Nash’, getting 24/7 access to a paint booth finally after 20 years doing this stuff, getting a degree at the local university (huh….) and picking up a new and challenging job in a totally different direction. Not to forget family. All these distractions added to the already 'weird' situation. Focus and clarity was needed.
As art/custom painting is my hobby, not my day job, this was the part in life I identified to clean up in order to have extra time for a better work-life balance. Much to the disappointment of a lot of people in the scene, who I call friends or very good buddies but did not have enough time to spend with the last few years: Udo, Moelle, Vosen, Maze, Andre, HP, Fernando, Andrew from Kiev, Horst, …
My focus has just shifted and I removed a few things that do not fit in my current life phase.
Mainly, I tried to remove activities that asked me to be away from my family, just because I have a demanding day job with little to no time during the week for my family. But, the upside is that I got to work on delivering all the projects I promised, but which got piled up and never got finished (read: no more new projects will be accepted). Whatever I promised will get done. It just takes time and some focus. Obviously, all this would not be possible without the support of my wonderful and understanding wife, who supports me in this adventure.
You might have noticed that I have been sharing glimpses of what I am doing on Instagram – I will continue that, but I plan to move my activities back to my blog, just to share my art, thoughts, learnings and ideas. And more important control the rights to my pictures. And there will be a few things to show. Stay tuned.
Keep on keeping on.
Michael
