I don’t make promises lightly. I take them very seriously, put a great deal of thought into them before I commit and at this point in my life I only know of one promise I have been unable to fulfill due to events beyond my control. A promise may take longer to fulfill than anticipated, but it is always in the back of my mind and will nag at me until I can follow through.
Starting this week I thought I would give you some back stories about why I write this blog, why I do some of the things I do and what is behind some of my artwork. What goes on here often feels random to me so I imagine it does to you too if you take the time to read this craziness, but there is a constant thread running throughout.
From my earliest memories I only remember wanting to do one thing consistently and that was to make art is some form or fashion. The smell of crayons still invoke memories of mark making by my tiniest self. There were complaints from my family members when I would ask them not to move while I drew them watching TV in the evening. I spent hours hiding under a tree making tiny stick villages and stories about the people in the village.
It was always in my head that this is what I would do all my life. Keep in mind that I grew up in a rural community and art was not accessible except in books, so where this ability or notion came from had to have been genetically installed somehow. I did not have artistic family members to learn from. As my Mom has said of me, “she was born with a pencil in her hand”.
I am not one of those people who will say that they had supportive people surrounding them. Quite frankly, I had very little support. I had a couple of teachers that encouraged my work, but otherwise I was expected to shoot for a practical career, so for a compromise I got my art degree, but with a concentration in graphic design instead of the studio art I would have preferred.
After college, life kicked in full force. I got a job as a designer/illustrator with a newspaper and eventually was an art director at a small ad agency. There came marriage, kids, a printing company we owned and eventually a divorce and a life reboot. All this time I squeezed in drawing, painting, making of some sort wherever I could. A couple of large sketchbooks full of future paintings were often my only art. It was not unusual for me to sell a piece of work here and there or get a commission on a fairly regular basis if once a year is regular. Trying to keep two kids in food, clothing and shelter often required me to work two jobs and I was too darn tired to pick up a paint brush.
Try as I may, I could not find any regular time to do what I loved to do the most. I can’t tell you how many times I almost threw away all my art supplies because I found it so depressing to see them and not use them. At some point when my kids were young and busy, busy, busy I realized that I had to quit beating myself up for not being able to create lovely artwork while sitting in a minivan at an hour of soccer practice five days a week. Trust me, I TRIED!
I couldn’t tell you the date, but somewhere in that era of time I made myself a promise. I promised my exhausted, stressed, often depressed, over worked self that I would do everything in my power to raise these two lovely humans I gave birth to, into good, kind, productive members of the human race and THEN, God willing, I would let myself have the time to draw, paint, make, whatever my heart desired.
And that, my friends, is where I find myself now. I would love to tell you that it is easy and perfect fulfilling this promise to myself, but I am finding that a promise to myself may be the hardest promise I have ever had to fulfill.
I will leave off here to continue next week for Part Two of the story.
Have a wonderful week!
Pencils, Paint & Paper 