Creating a Life I love Through Art
If I were to paint passion, this is what it would look like.
I have realized lately that though I am creating what feels natural to me, I am craving more meaning. I love depth and so appreciate realizations and growth and change. I know, shocking isn’t it?
This piece is reminding me that I can have an intention for an emotion or feeling and create from there. Ah! This feels like passion, exploding, moving, exploring, vibrating.. Ah!
More and more I am enjoying creating what I naturally do inside my art journal, outside on paper. I know I’ve written a lot about this, but it’s still part of the process. I am realizing that by starting with the paint, I give it a chance to be the main focus. And the rest is play!
It’s funny how life moves, ebbs and flows. Sometimes I am buzzing with this luscious creative energy pulsing through my body.
Other times I am a bit listless. My mind bouncing back and forth on a certain piece, playing through different actions I could take to get me back to that place of deliciously vibrant energy.
I always get back, but sometimes the journey is uncomfortable. Right now, I see images in my head over and over again and once I start creating them, they disappear and I’m left with only a sliver of what I saw. So there’s the anxiety, the flipping of my brain to figure it out, to solve the mystery.
As I sit here at the computer, reminding myself to be PRESENT with where I am, and that I will get back to creating soon enough, I am also remembering that part of the process IS the trial and error. It IS the moving closer and closer to who we are at the depth of our core, and then sometimes in the next second being washed back onto the shore unsure of what just happened.
Maybe this is what it feels like to be an artist.
Maybe this is what it feels like to be human.
The glorious blissful moments where everything connects, and then the constant yearning for that when it’s gone.
Maybe I don’t need to yearn.
Maybe I can breathe through the not knowing, and remember the process, remember that curiosity must remain in order for work to come alive at all.
I want my pieces to not only have color and movement, but to be full of feelings and heartbreak and power and vivid streaks of beauty and pain. The only way I can do any of that is to be there, dancing with it. Holding on to and letting it lead, allowing it to move to it’s own beat while I step out of the way and gracefully allow creativity to lead.
In the doodling spirit, here is another piece that is just about done. I am in absolute bliss adding color to my silly doodles. Ahhhh
Here is a piece I am in the middle of working on. I did this one a little different, and started drawing with the color first. It’s so much fun and my hand is lusciously cramping… Ahhhhh I love feeling it in my body.
Is it really art if I’m just allowing my hand to create without my head?
I’ll post it when it’s finished! xo
Before I started this blog,
before I was waking up every morning excited to create ART,
I was attempting to get a couple other business ideas going. I’ve always been severely passionate about many things and it seemed like I could swing quickly from one idea to another.
This would cause a lot of stress for me. I thought I SHOULD have been the kind of person that decided what I wanted to do at 18, went for it, and then that would be my life.
Life wasn’t like this for me at all. I have been all over the map! I’ve had plenty of corporate jobs with sales and recruiting and marketing and customer service. (I secretly wished I loved them enough for them to be ENOUGH), and then I’ve also had different kinds of jobs off the normal job scale, working for a spiritual healer, and in a trendy shop in Venice, California. Jobs that seemed kinda kick back and not very ambitious. And yet, I learned parts of myself that I didn’t know existed. As I look back, any of these jobs that I had where I was working FOR someone, no matter what they were, they were based on providing me with either enough resources to make art, or time to do it.
All of that is fine, except that I judged myself horribly for this. I thought “What is wrong with you, Jackie, that you need to create?” “Can’t you just find a CAREER and stick to it?”Even though my heart LONGED to create, I felt like needing to make art, was kind of in the way.
Life would be easier if I was simpler.
It’s funny that I’ve longed to have one career, when I know many people change what they are doing or wanting to do throughout their lives. But we are always evolving anyway, so it makes sense that how we want to show up in the world changes as well.
So back to my own businesses I was in the middle of… They were based on things that I like, and one was even concepts that I was PASSIONATE about; when I was working in a corporate setting. And yet, the actual work, the planning workshops, the research, not that horrible, but not super fun. The whole time I was doing this WORK for these businesses, I secretly wanted to be making art. Isn’t that funny?
And then I realized:
I decided to do these other businesses because I thought they would MAKE MONEY. And then if I was successful enough, maybe
I’D HAVE TIME TO MAKE ART.
What I really wanted to do,…
WAS MAKE ART.
It’s always always been that, but because I didn’t trust that I’d be taken care of, that I have been given these gifts for a reason, I’ve searched for YEARS to find JOBS and my own BUSINESSES that will give me the joy and fulfillment that art does.
So there’s been this part of me that feels embarrassed that I’ve changed my mind so many times, and yet,.. as I look at it, I haven’t changed my mind at all. I’ve known all along that I wanted to make art, I just didn’t allow myself to do it.
Yet another lesson I’m seeing, is to use the gifts that I have been given to create the life that my soul longs for. I am doing that! I am starting to believe that the more I fill my heart with love and do things that genuinely bring me joy, the more the right people, the right situations will find me.
I’m finally sitting here at my little laptop ready to WRITE. Finally. It’s been so long! And actually it’s felt like forever since
I’ve MADE ART.
I went from driving many hours to a wonderful party in Los Angeles to a couple of days back home sorting through life stuff. Sometimes this happens, right? Days go in ways we don’t expect, and routine gets flipped around. But I have so missed writing my daily posts.
I think what I’m recognizing is that I am so much better at being easy on myself. It’s been an excruciatingly long month with so many stressful things happening, and lots of gory feelings exploding all over the place, and lots of places where cobwebs are literally falling out of the shadows.
When I’d go through things like this in the past, I’d feel so much SHAME and wonder WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??
I should be able to handle this! I should be STRONGER BETTER FASTER more amazing than I am.
I SHOULD BE DIFFERENT.
Through the years, through the work I’ve been doing on myself, those voices still come up but they are softer, and they are way more in the background then they used to be. In fact, I can point them out! I can call them to the front of the classroom and tell them their help is no longer needed.
Now, I am in charge.
Because the last week has been again so much learning and growing and aching and changing,…
What is the most loving thing I can do for myself?
I can make art.
I was cruisin’ through Instagram and came across these wild mandalas. Marianne is a brilliant artist with an eye for detail. Wow!
I was browsing through Instagram, like I do,..
When I came across this frickin’ cool artist, Dan Lam.
Check out these funky town blobs and drips! Ha! https://www.instagram.com/sopopomo/
What a crazy fun kick ass artist. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy
Sunshine and Cerulean 