When I was in high school, applying to colleges, I remember people asking me what I wanted to study and be when I grew up. And I remember not knowing. Not having any idea. And so the next logical follow-up question from the adults asking me about my plans was “What is your favorite subject in school?” The answer to which was always Art. But it was clear in my family that art was a viable hobby but not a valid profession. After all “you can’t make a living as an artist” was a paradigm in my family. I was told that on more than one occasion, usually followed up with some well-meaning guidance like “study business, then you can do anything.”
Being a people pleaser and world class expectation-meeter, I assumed that the well-meaning adults in my life knew more about life and what to do with it than I did, and I followed their advice. I also took it to mean that I wasn’t talented enough to be an artist. I didn’t have what it takes. Being an artist wasn’t the path I was meant to take. It wasn’t a viable path for me. I would never be successful at it.
I’ve already told a bit of the story about my path through college, business school and the corporate world in earlier posts…so I’ll summarize that part here as the 25 year hiatus that I took from being an artist to pursue more “practical pursuits” in the business world. I would occasionally take an art class here or there, but always as a non-serious hobby because I locked away my dream of being an artist at 17 years old when I went to college, and really didn’t look back during this period.
Then I went to a conference called Celebrate Your Life. It was an amazing place with inspiring speakers and kindred-spirit attendees. It was a spiritual conference of sorts, with many Hay House and other authors as the speakers and workshop leaders. That weekend every single exercise, every past life regression, every dream, and many conversations I had with others all led back to painting or being an artist. It was like the Universe was hitting me over the head that I needed to start to paint again. I needed to start creating again. I remember Oprah saying that God will whisper to you, and if you don’t pay attention it will get louder and louder until you pay attention to it. I laugh when I think of that weekend. There was no way I couldn’t pay attention any longer. It was almost comical the extent to which it had to be reinforced over and over and over again in a very short time span to get me to pay attention to it.
I left that weekend having received the message. I vowed to show up and paint every day for 30 days, suspending judgment of the outcome. My job was to put paint to canvas, to create. It did not matter the quality of the creations. Shortly after then a friend turned me onto a mixed media artist who put out weekly videos of her process, and it was messy and imperfect and wonderful, and I was hooked. All I wanted to do was create. And as I talked to some of the newer people in my life about what I was experiencing, I received a lot of reinforcement that I was on the right path. It was like the Universe was speaking to me through my friends and acquaintances. I remember telling my naturopath about it and she said “Yes! Do more of that!” And proceeded to ask me if I’d ever been to a museum and wondered “what in the world is that doing on these walls?” That different people resonated with different artists and that if I was drawn to creating art, there would be people who would resonate with what I created. That helped me to start to reframe my “not talented enough” paradigm.
I created almost daily for a year-and-a-half, and took a number of workshops taught by artists I admired, before I started getting the nudge to “put my art out there” and sell my art. During that year-and-a-half I only focused on creating, suspending judgment of the outcomes, but also was pleasantly surprised by all of the pieces that I had created that I really loved. I learned that I LOVED color and texture. I could get lost in the textures I was able to create, and loved experimenting with new ways to create texture. And it was super fun to use all of my favorite colors, and to intuitively feel into which colors to use next to compliment what was already on the canvas. I learned to layer, and that each layer on the canvas added depth to the piece. It also served to help me let go of perfectionism. If I didn’t like a layer, or felt that I had “messed up” a previous layer, I would just keep going. Eventually I would LOVE it! That is when I knew that a piece was complete. I learned to listen to myself, to begin to trust myself more deeply, and to follow my intuition, my inner guidance, my inner knowing. It wasn’t the end of this part of my journey, it was just the beginning. It was pivotal for me, and I will be forever grateful.
What are your experiences reconnecting to creativity you may have walked away from earlier in your life? How did it make you feel to reconnect to it again?