Keep That Spark Shining!

I realized the other day that I have written about being a mom, being a job seeker, and being a person, but not much about being an artist. 

At my kids' school their counsellor has worked hard over the years to get them in tune with their "spark" - you know, that thing that makes them who they are. I love this idea - it is a great way to show the kids what they are good at and focus on the positives in their lives. 

I would say that I am good at a number of things - writing, relating to other people's children, putzing in my garden, making lasagna, you get the idea. But the thing I've always felt a special connection to was art. It's the one thing that as I do it, time escapes me and I don't know if minutes or hours have passed. Most of what I do is self taught - though I've taken a couple of classes here and there, I don't have a degree in fine art. All I do comes from inside me somewhere. I've always loved to draw, and was fascinated by paint but was too scared to try it. For my birthday one year, my awesome husband bought me everything I needed to paint, and said "There, now quit your whining about not know how to paint and just do it!" It was a struggle at first - mostly in figuring out what to paint and how colors work together - but one day I copied a painting by an artist I love whose painting was used on a CD cover we had. I realized I'd done a pretty decent job and started studying her works to emulate her style. After many years my style has become my own with obvious influences by this artist - Pattsi Valdez, a contemporary artist in LA. 

The dumb thing is, though, that when I'm stressed or feeling blue, the one thing that should bring me out of it, falls to the wayside and gets neglected in the corner until I'm feeling better about things. I've tried to paint or create when I'm unhappy or stressed and I usually wind up making mistakes and getting frustrated and just walking away from it. Art is my happy place, where unhappy thoughts aren't welcome. i know some people explore those deep, dark, brooding places within through their art, but I just can't do that. There's enough of that stuff in the everyday world. I need to create places that make me happy. Places that I would love to crawl into with a book and just live for a while. All that said, I'm very happy that in the last couple of weeks, the cobwebs have been wiped off of my brushes and paints and I've been working on several pieces simultaneously. I've even been exploring some new ideas, and even using people as subjects, which rarely happens in my works as I'm not so good at painting them. 

So what's the point of this blog? It's simply this: don't lose your spark! Hold it near and dear, and even if you have to set it aside for a little while, always, ALWAYS come back to it. It's this spark that defines us, if not in the world, to ourselves.