Coming Home

"The opportunity that the painting offers is to let down the barriers we’ve erected  around our own deep listening,  and to experience being at home with ourselves  in the very moment of creation. "

- Stewart Cubley

(Essence. A bit bigger than 4'x6'. acrylic, erratic motion, and love.)

So, regardless of skill or criticism or all that technical mumbo-jumbo art commandment guideline jazz that my BFA says I ought to make and judge art by... all those years and dollars spent exploring the making of art so that i might "get somewhere" with it... only to find that i was getting nowhere in that framework - nowhere that spoke to my soul or what i felt to be true about the whole process... and regardless of leaving that part of me behind for years, thinking that i must not have what it takes, that i just wasn't getting it, that it wasn't what i thought (how horribly devastating that was!)...

regardless of that journey and hiatus...

i have found myself coming home.

to me.

to art.

through art making.

through the space of awareness.

in a medium essentially new to me.

and i LOVE painting.

the hard, deep work of it. and the exhilarated carefree play of it.

i love the awareness and growth i find through the process of painting.

it is teaching me that art IS everything i ever dreamt it was, and more.

and so am i.

i am stronger and more amazing than i have ever given myself due credit for

(even with all of my flub-ups and flaws, quarks and stumbles).

and the most precious gift of all...

is that i am finding...

that i love ME when i paint.

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This is a painting invitation based on Week 5 of my BIG Fearless Painting journey with Connie H. of Dirty Footprints Studio.