I hadn’t planned on a #ShePersisted painting when I entered my studio. I’m working on a collaborative project with another artist and yesterday, my goal was to complete our current section of the project.

And then, the muse whispered and I listened and #RainbowWoman was born. No. 66 in the series.

It started with the background. I had some excess black paint on my GelliPad (a rubber pad used for monoprinting). It looked too inviting to waste so I randomly imprinted some leaves onto it and took a print.

The black and white leaves looked inviting, so I kept going.

“Between black and white there is a rainbow of colour,” the muse whispered.

Earlier, I’d found a cocktail napkin in a drawer. Its flowers were bright and colourful. Perfect for the painting.

I separated the layers of the napkin, cut out some of the flowers and collaged them to the black and white background.

And that’s when the real magic happened.

The muse kept whispering. Kept flowing,

And I kept listening and flowing with her. That’s when #66 of the #ShePersisted series whispered, “Bring me into being.”

And so, with the muse as my co-conspirator, I danced with creative abandon she she came into being.

That’s the thing about creativity. It isn’t that its just for the ‘few’. It’s for and in all of us. Creativity is in constant flow-state. All of life is a creative dance with nature. How we express our knowing of it, our awareness and expression of its delights is as colourful as a rainbow full of possibilities.

Whether or not there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow doesn’t change the rainbow’s beauty.

Creative expression isn’t about the beauty of the output either. It’s about diving into the pot of life’s colourful possibilities bubbling up, seeking expression.

When we stop judging whether we’re creative, or not, and allow ourselves to express ourselves in our own unique voice, nothing can dim the beauty of our creative expressions – not even our self-criticisms.

The world is filled with black and white. You can say you’re creative, or not. It doesn’t really matter whether you accept you’re creative, or not. Fact is, the world is filled with over 7 billion unique expressions of life. We are each a creative expression in action. Each a creative force of nature. Living this one beautiful, precious life awakened to our inherent creativity frees us to express ourselves in all the colours of the rainbow and, it allows us to seek answers, solutions ways of solving big and small problems beyond the black and white of what other’s see as the limits of possibility.

Because, in between the black and white, there are a rainbow of colours waiting to be explored.

Namaste

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