When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. Pablo Picasso
When I was a child, my sister and I spent hours re-enacting scenes from our favourite movies. Gone with the Wind. The Parent Trap. We knew all the characters, all the parts and we each had our favourites.
It didn’t matter that our stage was a stretch of lawn or that Tara was a sheet draped over a tree or that we each had to play three or four different parts, differentiating the characters only through our voices as we didn’t have time to change wardrobe — we didn’t really have any wardrobe to change into anyway. This was a low budget reproduction — very creative, just not very accurate.
But none of that mattered. What mattered most was that we spent the time together. Laughing. Sharing. Creating.
When I was a child, I liked to draw. To sing and dance and to play piano. I liked to write and make up stories. To play dolls and the now politically incorrect, “Cowboys and Indians”.
It didn’t matter to me what the game or activity. What mattered most was that I was being creative. Expressing myself through arts of all nature.
And then, I grew up.
I still liked to write. To create. To make something out of nothing.
But the tone was different. There was something lacking in my creation.
I kept thinking it needed ‘A Purpose.’
To create for creation sake just didn’t seem to be viable, make sense, have meaning. If I was painting, there needed to be a reason. If I was writing, there needed to be an audience. And, if I was dancing, there needed to be ‘the right steps’.
I’ve grown beyond those ‘grown-up’ days of believing I need ‘A Purpose’ to my art. I’ve grown beyond thinking there are right steps, wrong moves, perfect brushstrokes or perfectly turned phrases.
I’ve grown into being me. Creatively. Expressively. Passionately.
Today, I know that at my core I am a creative being. That life is an act of creation.
Today, I express myself in ways that fulfill on my belief, and need, to create beauty in the world around me.
Today, I let go of the right steps and move with grace and ease into being each step I take to create beauty in the world around me.
There’s freedom in each movement. Freedom in being my creative self.
And, there’s joy in knowing every breath I take is an act of creation. Every step I take is an expression of the beauty I want to create in the world and each brushstroke, each word written are all an expression of me.
On the weekend, I started working into a background I’d created for a painting a couple of weeks ago. I drew and cut out a stencil of a woman and painted her into the painting. It’s called, The Goddess Emerges and I will be selling it at the art show I’m in this weekend.
To create the two women in that painting, I drew the figures onto a wax type paper stenciled with musical notes and words and images. I wanted to add colour to the cut outs so placed one of the figures on a canvas board that was tucked into a corner of my studio.
For me, painting into the figure inspired the quote for No. 41 in my #ShePersisted series. I like this quote — it speaks to what I perceive to be part of the feminist struggle for social justice — Why bother? The injustice is all in our imaginations.
The creative process is a constant journey through trial and error, experimentation and hope.
What happens when…
The art of creating is to give into your true self. 
Dare Boldly 