So I found myself at forty-two years of age, starting life over.
I have done a number of things on this journey. I have started living healthier and losing weight. Life is too short to be bogged down with bogus health issues. Not when some of them are completely within my control. I have started engaging more on social media, keeping and maintaining connections to my friends, and making new connections. I have reached out and found new connections to my mother's family, which is one of the most amazing and tremendous things I have discovered. I have learned that I have cousins that share my world view as well as my bloodline and family history.
I started this blog, and have been writing every single day (not just here, but on project that I had been putting off because "Something more important" was always coming up.)
And I have rediscovered my life in art.
I used to draw. All. The. Time. I had sketchbooks on top of sketchbooks. I doodled and sketched and painted. I sculpted and learned to make things with wire (like jewelry). I always had art as a part of my life.
Then I let life get me. I let the negatives and the sadness and the stress erase the substance of who I am until all that was left was a vague outline. All of the dimension was gone.
It took my grief to snap me back into myself.
I turned to art as therapy, and in an effort to no longer hide myself, I began putting things out for everyone to see. To my amazement, people responded positively. And then something unbelievable happened.
I sold a drawing. A drawing done by my little hands with pastels on paper. Something that did not exist until I created it was wanted enough by someone else that they spent their own money to get it.
Real, spendable money.
This had to be a fluke. No one else is ever going to want to purchase something that I have made.
Then the second piece sold.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
So now I have this thing that I love, this thing that is so much a part of me that I could no more separate it from myself than I could detach my own head, and this thing has the potential to make money?
Get out of town!
I buckled down and drew more. I put out more pieces. I drew and drew and drew...
And then I realized that what I was drawing wasn't exactly resonating with me the way I wanted them to. I felt that voice of self doubt creep in. I have to stomp it out. I have to silence that tiny fiend or I know I will let this go, just like I did before. I am not living that life any more. I will not, I cannot. Not today, sister.
So I decided to stretch my boundaries. I am working on a 30 day art challenge. Every day I am going to draw something new... the object is to spend no more than 30-45 minutes on a piece, to push your own boundaries, and to work with the first thing that comes to your mind.
There were several variations on this idea out there on the web, and I decided, like all things, that I had to be different. The kids helped me come up with words and ideas, and we pulled them out of a hat. (A literal hat).
The 30 Day Art Challenge - Ala Dawn
- Flight
- Dreams or Dreamscape
- Darkness
- Character
- Love
- Motherhood
- Nature
- Movement
- Astrology
- Harmony
- Technology
- Lightness
- Water
- Sweet
- Out of Time
- Reflections
- Purity
- Solitude
- Freedom
- Joy
- Mystery
- Childhood
- Fantasy
- Companion
- Abstract
- Modern
- Wish
- Happiness
- Comfort
- Self
Day one was Flight. A perfect start. My life is taking off. I have wings. I can reach the sun.
Flight, Watercolor and Colored Pencils on paper.
It may have been literal, but it pushed me. I have never drawn a bird before, much less a bird in flight.
My mother puts out nectar for the hummingbirds.
I never tire of watching them fly.
Tomorrow, I get to paint my dreams.
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