Buddy on his ATV

Got to play Grandma last night with four of my six grandchildren, ages 9,9,5 and 3. I went to the store and got Xmas ornaments to paint and we had a blast. The  3 year old dips the brush in every color without rinsing in between and ends up with a gorgeous muddy purple that he thinks is da bomb. So it is. Then he squeezed gloppy glitter glue on the Xmas Tree and announced, “It looks like an octopus!” And it did. He very firmly announced he wanted to hang THAT one in his room! Such unbridled creativity and joy in what was created was a thing to behold. The 5 year old is, in fact, extremely talented artistically and blew through five ornaments (well done) to everyone else’s one. She has absolutely no low self-esteem issues and her announcement was something along the lines of being the best artist of everyone there. The two nine year olds were thrilled to learn a new technique of transferring an image from a printout reference photo to the painting surface (scribbling graphite to the back and making a transfer) and then made some wonderful paintings in that free, “the photo doesn’t have this but I want a tree THERE”, creative spirit children possess. I learned that Jack wants to be an architect (!yay!) and toiled away at a very detailed painting of his grandparents’ home.  Brooke, also 9, ended up with a beautiful waterfall painting that had fabulous balance of lights and darks. Kids do that naturally somehow. Was great fun and in another life I think I would have enjoyed being an art teacher. After painting ornaments, I took a photo printout of one of their friends’ dogs, Buddy, on the ATV and did this photo in kids tempera paints on photocopy paper. It was very liberating to paint like a kid again and hope to have many more sessions of it.

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My First Pet Portrait: Samantha, 1999-2008

One of my favorite quotes is, I think, an old zen saying: “My barn burned down. Now I can see the moon.” It sums up how I try to approach life, finding the blessings in life’s ups and downs. In 2008, for probably the fourth major time in my life, “my barn burned down”, and I had to reinvent my life. Besides my spiritual practices, I found that returning to those long neglected paintbrushes helped me find my way out of the dark. After reading many artists’ blogs and finding so much inspiration from them — not just about how to paint, but more about how to have the courage to paint anyway — I decided to start blogging as a commitment to myself to join this community. I just put up my first ‘for sale’ paintings on eBay and I cannot believe the negative self-talk and anxiety that has plagued me all day. But I refuse to listen. I know they’re not as skillful as I’d like, but I feel if I wait until I think they’re “good enough” I’ll be dead first! Finally, tonight, I feel that it’s fine if they don’t sell, I feel happy I had the courage to step out into this world of art.  Later I’ll tell you all the wonderful artists and resources I’ve found online so that if you, too, want to know the healing power of color and a paintbrush you can come on in. The water’s warm.

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