2026 Goal Setting
Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been intentionally starting out the year slowly. I haven’t been into the studio much, but I’ve been spending a lot of time reading, reading environmental non-fiction, reading books about color theory and painting and soft pastels, and reading art history. I’ve also done some major cleaning and de-cluttering, trying to make space for new projects and ideas. My overall intention for 2026 is to be a bit more balanced and a lot less stressed. Last year I either felt extremely busy, with working on multiple major projects at once, or not busy enough. And that made me feel quite stressed for a large part of the year. So I’m framing my goals with that intention in mind and dialing back a little bit in my goals:
Work on 3 mural projects
Paint 30 paintings
Apply to 20 art calls
One of my favorite parts of last year was assisting on a 70’+ long, 10’ tall mural Move. Radiate. Inspire. at the O.B. Whaley Elementary School in San Jose over the summer. Painting outdoors on a large scale brought me a lot of joy, and I was able to work with other artists. I want to focus on building my mural experience this year, so I’ve set a goal of working on three mural projects. I don’t have to be the lead or designer for those mural projects; assisting on murals has been a great learning experience with low risk and responsibility. Three seems reasonable because I’m working closely with the artist who I worked with last year and she has a couple of potential clients. Additionally, I’m working on a private home mural that I’m hoping to install this month.
I’m halving the number of paintings I aspire to paint this year. I want to create larger works this year, and painting 60+ paintings last year was only feasible because the majority of the paintings I created last year were 6x6” or 8x10”. I have a new series in mind that I’ve been working towards all the way back in 2020, but I want to fully focus on this series and create larger paintings to support it.
I also reduced the number of art calls I want to apply to this year. To this end, I’ll be more judicious about the types of opportunities I’m applying to. I want to schedule some bigger trips this year, which means that I have to limit the various events and shows I can reasonably create work and attend.
I spent a lot of time thinking about my goals this year and I really thought about what I enjoy the most and what is important to me in order to come up with succinct goals. I’ve also removed some goals that are now part of my regular yearly routine, like hosting open studio events, since I know I’ll be doing that with my studio. I hope that I’ll be able to carry out my intentions of having a balanced year throughout the entirety of the year. I’m working on not feeling guilty when things aren’t busy and focusing on the free time I’m able to allocate to painting and practicing my craft. After working as an artist full time for a few years now, I can see that in time everything builds on top of each other, even if I can’t see it in the moment. So I need to trust that the work I do now will amount to something in the future, so I should work on things that really matter.
Those are my thoughts now, feeling rested and relaxed at the start of the year. We’ll see where this year goes! I hope you all had some time to rest and reflect on the new year. I would love to hear any resolutions or goals you have. Thank you all once again for following me along on this journey.
