waiting for her turn

I feel like in my work I have constantly been preparing. Filling sketchbooks with ideas drawing madly to prepare for what? For painting. As if all of this play needs to finally be realized in a painting. As if it all needs to be figured out to call it my work. Maybe the preparation is the work., or at least some of it. I wish I could stop the voice that tells me to figure out who I am as an artist. Why am I always trying to get to the last line of the story? Is it ever the most important line in the book?