I think I started painting for a few different reasons. One is colors - they are like a drug to me. When I squeeze them out of the tube & begin using them, it is like my eyes are drinking something they've been thirsty for & I feel more satisfied & alive. I started painting when I was young - I remember one day when I was 5 years old I tranced out completely while painting.... I didn't have the words for that kind of transcendant experience, but I knew what had happened and I knew I wanted to do that, over and over. |
(I was a self-aware kid.) My
mother was/is an artist (see
her Web site), which was an influence. When I was 5 & in Kindergarten,
the teacher asked us all what we wanted to do when we grew up - I said
I wanted to paint pictures for people to hang up on their walls! When
I was 9, I wrote & illustrated a story, and I felt so high on the energy
of it all, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I strayed from painting/drawing
for a long time - returned to it off and on - but felt frustrated because
I didn't feel I was any good at it & my mother was very competitive &
critical. I took art & calligraphy classes until I was about 11 or 12,
but felt frustrated just copying work out of magazines. I have to say
I was weak for many years and because of my inability to manifest what
I saw inside, I had a love/hate relationship with visual art. I was more
loyal to writing - I have thousands & thousands of pages of work now.
It took me years to find my voice in writing - I spent a long time writing
for an inner critic, but I think now I write from a place deep inside
of me, and I respect and honor that place. I am just now beginning to
entwine my art & writing. I am working on an illustrated novel, Green
Things Rising. (You
can read excerpts of it here.)
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