I have been feeling pretty great since I started back doing some art. When this happens I always want to analyze it and ask why now and why art? About six months ago I contemplated packing up all my supplies and getting rid of them. I told myself "you will never feel inspired to do that again".
This wasn't really in a bad way but I thought maybe I was holding on to a part of me that wasn't there anymore. Maybe I was ready to move on. I have bought tons of supplies over literally decades and done nothing with them. A moment of inspiration where I imagined myself sitting down and painting or drawing. I could never bring myself to find the joy I knew growing up where creating was all I wanted to do.
When I was child even before my mother got sick I was exiled to our basement and I created non stop. In high school I turned to art as an outlet for the pain I felt being used by my family as a their personal live in servant. Art was freedom and the other students mostly outcast and mostly high were not judgmental and I was just another person struggling through life.
The art world in general can also be competitive and we were all divided into two categories by the teacher talented and not so talented. I am my own worst critic and I could see that I belonged in the second group. I took this to heart but it was confirmed when two of us were asked to paint the backdrop for our school play. We spent days on it a bright beautiful and colorful sunset only to find that when the curtain was raised someone talented had painted a sad gray sky with boats.
I dropped out of art after that. Our art teacher should of told us but she was in her 20's and probably couldn't face us. My thoughts about myself had been confirmed I wasn't good enough to be an artist.
It always amazes me how we internalize the things that happen when our brain is still forming and how adults have no idea how their actions and words can change lives for better or for worse.
I feel free these days like I have never before. I have accepted that I am that girl in the basement creating non-stop. I have tried to be many other things to fit into this world but nothing really stuck. I have to create and I do that with my work and I can visit the outside world while I am doing it. It has taken me forever to accept who I am and enjoy everyday.
We can see that the world we have created in our head is mostly fiction and can be re-written to reflect the life we want for ourselves now. We can forgive others for their careless words or thoughtless actions that changed us. We can forgive ourselves for internalizing these things and believing them for the decades that followed. It is our own voice that decides to give those words meaning.
I woke up at 7 this morning made myself an espresso and have drawn one portrait and completed one pen and ink drawing. I am no longer holding myself back and carrying around the voices of my childhood in my head. I am happy to be the girl in the basement creating.
Art and the creative process is healing and I believe a form of meditation. I can let go and just let it all out.
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