Inspiration

I love to create. I had a wonderful Grandpa who could look at something and build it. I had a Grandma who taught me to bake and sew and garden. Both of my grandmas, two women, who always looked the other way regardless of the size of the mess made I made. A mom who bought me Legos and a father who gave me my first set of tools when I was two.

I have taught myself how to hand bind books and how build picture frames and cut mats and glass. I take pictures, play with clay or paper mache or just plain build. But before this year I would not have thought to turn to drawing or painting as a way to create because I always got the message in all of my 2-D art classes that I was not a "good" artist.

Thankfully, I finally got the message of "process not product." There were days I could not wait to get home and draw something with craypas or colored pencils or paint with watercolor. Like I said earlier, my journal and I are not friends right now so the message of "process not product" came at an opportune time.

The idea (before I realized it really was an idea) for this piece came from as series of three drawings that I did in the middle of November.

I was hurting and created the first piece. I showed it to two wonderful and wise healers and both told me, in no uncertain terms, that that could not be the last picture that I drew.

"Draw two more" one said, "and if it's easier draw the last one, the goal, first and then fill in the middle, the how." Amazingly, the "how" came easy, as soon as I had imagined what the end, what my goal was. I honestly cannot remember which one I drew first.

The end, the goal, came easily. Well the idea for the goal came easily: colorful, orderly and bold. It took awhile to convince myself that colorful was okay. I love bright colors, I make and wear tie dye on a regular basis, my rain jacket it bright orange, I never wear plain white shirts unless they are layered with something (usually) obscenely bright. Even so, it was difficult to color this as brightly as I wanted to.

The "how" remained a pencil sketch for a long time. An outline of a person with all these pieces surrounding her. Little, big, whole and broken pieces waiting to be integrated into the whole. Slowly, one piece at a time I began to outline the figures. Sometimes I could only bring myself to color only one piece a sitting, other times two pieces, swirling in, ready to be integrated.

Holy crazy scary.

Looking at this picture it was like finding last piece of the puzzle. I realized while looking at this picture that the work is really just beginning. The last three years have been a journey of discovery, finding pieces of myself that have been left along the way.

This is the next step on my journey, to live my way into wholeness.