Tag Archives: Inspiration

Birthday Schmirthday

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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I had to have another birthday last week. I am older than I have ever been and still dazed and confused about life much of the time, but doing fine. These birthdays can kill you. There were a couple days worth of celebration; cards, calls and lovely gifts mixed in with a few dark, unpleasant surprises, but such is life. It was a real birthday – real – not quite all love and laughter every single minute all the time. But that’s ok, I am ok and life goes on. Yesterday I had a birthday lunch and movie with a dear friend, tonight I am having a late celebration with an exceedingly important person in my life, and so the birthday beat goes on….beat beat beat, just like a heart.

I ran across several quotes this week that I happen to love so much that I wanted to share them with you. The one on the cover of the black book that I was given just yesterday, in the above picture, is stunningly true, and I know that because I have lived it. I guess we all have.

Here is the second one, from one of my favorite people for wise and wonderful quotes, Maya Angelou :

“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.”

That can keep you thinking all day long, going over your life and remembering when you might have made that mistake. When you reach the upper birthdays you have probably, if you are getting older AND wiser, weeded some folks out of your days because they are no longer an enhancement to your life, for one reason or another. Life gets short, your days are numbered, you have a sense of urgency about how you will best spend your time remaining. If a certain someone is not ever contributing to the great good, you tend to see less of them, wanting to spend your days in positivity and appreciation for all the things that bring you to a good place, a place of comfort and joy.

Many Thanks to my brother, for sending me one of the most beautiful, original birthday greetings I have ever had. I will keep it and read it every year. Thanks to all my many friends ( including my blog friends whom I have never met) and relatives for remembering me and being the loving support that keeps me going, because it really does take a village, for your entire life. I value your words of wisdom and your ability to make me laugh. I have you in my life because you are all lights in my universe, and we all need to have light. You all influence how I paint, what I write about, what I say in conversation and what I believe in my heart to be true. We are all the sum of many parts, and I am the expression of the sum total of the people I surround myself with. So are you.

But you all probably already knew that, didn’t you?

 

 

This We Have Now – New Work by Homare Ikeda

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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original art courtesy and copyright of Homare Ikeda 2014

This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief or joy. Not a judging state, or an elation, or sadness. Those come and go. This is the presence that doesn’t.  – RUMI, 12th century poet

You have heard me refer to Homare Ikeda in my blog many times (See my Archives) – my esteemed instructor for Advanced Contemporary Painting at Art Students League, Denver. Friday night was his most recent opening titled REVISIT at Wm. Havu Gallery, www.williamhavugallery.com in downtown Denver. The stories told in his paintings are more than magical – they are transcendent. It is not unusual for him to work on a painting for years – sometimes as long as 18 years – revisiting it from time to time, enhancing, subtracting, building layer upon layer in order to evolve the image through the years of its life. These incarnations of art reveal stories of each particular time and place the painting is revisited. That is why and how his art lives, breathes and grows, revealing a language of intricate symbols expressed in whimsical playfulness that provide the artist with a means of conversation, and the art becomes a dialogue between the artist and the paint. How fortunate we are to be offered a glimpse of this personal communication.

http://www.homareikeda.com

 

 

The Artful Grace of Gratitude

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

Friedrich Nietzsche  Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/friedrichn100896.html#Xjd7rOQCkWQr6kYC.99

I am reminding us all today what Nietzsche had to say on the subject of art. And I so agree with him. Furthermore, you have all heard the quote, “There but for the grace of God go I.” from John Bradford. John Bradford was a prebendary of St. Paul’s. He was an English Reformer and martyr. Bradford was in the Tower of London for alleged crimes against Mary Tudor for his Protestant faith. Bradford was burned at the stake on 1 July 1555. Life’s adversity finally caught up with him, apparently. But he left us with a quote we all remembered. en.wikipedia.org

My Archives contain a blog I wrote titled “This being human is a guest house…..” That is a great quote by Rumi, used for the title in a post where I discuss the experience of being creative and how that gift might be affected by basic human daily moods, life’s worst traumas and all points in between. For some reason or another this blog is recently receiving a lot of attention. People can relate to it – probably because we know that none of what life offers us ever comes our way without meaning attached and/or an implied message that can be learned from it. Nothing is wasted in the universal plan. Everyone has a story and yet what you do with that story is what defines you and your creative work. Where and how do you place a creative reference to the joys of your life and also the troubles you have seen? Have you learned to put the passion from your life experiences to good work? Will you share? Can you reveal yourself for the sake of creativity? Are you a card-carrying member of the human race, having paid your dues of life out in the muddy trenches, or are you merely a side-line observer?

My recommendation in that blog is to use these swings in spirit – these normal and/or difficult human experiences – these ups and downs. Use them to your advantage, be influenced by them, acquire depth in your creative efforts from them and milk them for all they are worth. The gifts that life’s experiences bring to you are the unexpected dividends that feed your creative soul. The best writers, artists, poets, actors, composers, photographers, inventors don’t live in blissful bubbles. They allow themselves to FEEL. They offer themselves up to the universe as vulnerable human sponges, able to absorb and learn and express. If you are going to be blowing in the wind at the mercy of one day’s terrible misfortunes or another day’s earthly delights, then walk directly through the chaos and let the pain or the pleasure wash over you and allow it to bring depth and understanding to your creativity. Paint right through it, write about it, speak or sing or photograph it. For God’s sake express yourself. If you will just feel things, deeply, truly feel them rather than attempting to deny or escape their weight on your shoulders, your creative work will shine as a result, because people recognize soul when they see it.

People who drink to excess out of denial, use drugs for painkillers and to escape, while becoming experts in dodging life’s greater challenges are forever frozen in the hollow status quo of being pitifully without the degree of character development and depth that is earned by feeling deeply. If you want to experience the passion for life we are all meant to enjoy then do not shrink from adversity. And on the flip side, when you are high on life and all it has to offer, decide what you are going to do with that intensity of joy. Even goodness holds responsibility for expression and thanks……display your healthy soul so others might learn.

A kind of gratitude is born in walking directly into the fire and coming out OK on the other side. Someone told me the other day that I seemed to be quite happy now. This was a person who knows my history – and is aware what I have been through….the before, the walking through it, and the after. My art and my writing have become enlightened and enhanced as a result of all of it – they are the total sum of all my parts, because I figured out how to use adversity to go deep. And I know whereof I speak.

Hangin’ With the Creative Ones

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

And what an awesome tribe it is! ;)

Seldom have I written one blog so closely on the heels of the previous one, as a follow up, but here we go….since I seem to have struck a very good nerve with yesterday’s post.

Creative people always have new insights and alternatives that no one else thought of. And we really don’t know for sure where they come from. Yet it is such a simple, basic  concept; and the most obvious way of spotting a more creative thinker. How many times have you been involved in a conversation with a person, or a group of people where someone is struggling with a decision in which some choices, some alternatives, must be weighed and considered so that the right  decision can be made – and yet that person believes the decision must be made at the exclusion of all the other viable and even desirable choices? I see that a lot – people believing that one choice must trump all others and that valuable sacrifices have to be made to achieve the major goal. Well that is just crazy.

For many years I saw myself as only an artist – I thought that my constant desire to write would dilute the art pursuit, lesson my attention to it and even diminish it. As I matured I discovered that I had a book or even a half dozen books inside me shouting for my attention, and I began to say to myself, “If not now, when?” I said to me, “What in the hell is your excuse not to write? Do you want to stifle this urge for the rest of your life?” OH! You mean that painting thing you do….well just maybe the writing would actually enhance the art and vice versa. I had to try it and it worked. The two passions in my life dovetail perfectly and have each become better for the union. The  two are so much alike, and one feeds the other in a constant loop of inspiration. Miraculously there is a little space left in my mind for other stuff too – I still have time to read, exercise, eat some food once in a while, sleep  and have some fun in addition. What a surprise. Imagine that.

You could say I had an epiphany – one of my favorite subjects. My second book, THE CREATIVE EPIPHANY – Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations is the result of my own epiphany breakthrough. I have had many life-changing epiphanies in my life, and I learned a long time ago that if you ignore the little message coming to you from your subconscious, you will regret it later. It will come back louder and more often until it is red-faced, wild-eyed and literally screaming and spitting at you to listen!! So be aware and open to inner voices. They always tell the truth and they always have your best interests at heart, because they are from the soul. Your soul. Like a pipeline of the truth, coming from where the truth really lives.

Many creative people have had such revelations. I believe we all, as human beings, have in common the potential to tap into the messages coming from our higher self, our inner voice, our soul – whatever you choose to call it – but few exercise that ability on a steady basis except the more creative ones. We often feel that we are actually channeling our creative gifts from beyond, and that our creative breakthroughs come to us from outside our own consciousness. There are many books on this subject. People call that phenomenon being in the flow. You could read the book FLOW  – the psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published by Harper for more information.

In the meantime, you can also surround yourself with creative people who think beyond the normal scope of things. Yes, everyone calls it outside the box but even that is limiting. I believe that highly creative people are in tune with the universe.

My Summer Festival 2014

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival.

The soul at dawn is like darkened water that slowly begins to say THANK YOU, thank you.

I am not contained by this universe. RUMI

I hope you are all enjoying the summer of 2014 to the fullest – including whatever activities define your favorite summertime theme. God knows the international news is chilling, disturbing and so difficult to watch unfold. I cannot overestimate its importance….but from where I sit there is little I can do about it except to carefully choose accurate, unbiased media outlets and read the WordPress blog titled THE HUMAN PICTURE by my wise friend ShimonZ who lives in Jerusalem, hoping that he continues to stay safe, and offer us his first-hand accounts.  http://thehumanpicture.wordpress.com  How fortunate we are, here in the USA., and I am all too aware that it must not be taken for granted.

My own personal summer fun involves live music, gallery shows, outdoor mountain adventure, great fresh food, best friends, loving family and one special man. All that good stuff is wrapped around a pulsating cultural scene in the greater Denver area and beyond. Denver is ALIVE here in 2014 – electric and eclectic, pulsing with new jobs and construction, cutting edge restaurants and shops – growing by leaps and bounds into a gorgeous environment with everything available to satisfy many kinds of people and lifestyles. cThe foothills and expanses of parkland are greener than I have EVER seen them – the rains have been good to us this year. That life-giving liquid Mother Nature gift can all change in the blink of an eye, so better to love it and capture it in pictures while we can.

Yesterday I purchased more collage paper for my mixed media abstract paintings, using a gift certificate from my son that he had given me for Mother’s Day. You could offer me a clear, perfectly cut gemstone, and given the choice I would be more thrilled with the collage paper. These days I am able to find unique and exotic papers from all over the world – I buy them in Hawaii when I am there because they have a special Asian flavor, I bought them in Singapore when I visited my daughter, I find the most enormous selection I have ever found at FLAX in San Francisco….and I can find a perfectly wonderful variety here in Denver at Meininger Art Supply,   www.meininger.com  where I have been purchasing art supplies since the 60’s or in Boulder just 45 minutes up the highway. I have a discerning eye – I have been doing this for years – so a paper that you might think is extraordinarily  beautiful might be something that I used for a long period of time in my artwork 25 years ago and finally got tired of – but each to his own and if I could educate you a bit about what is out there you would understand.

These papers are made for collage art – they are most definitely not wrapping papers, or drawing papers, and certainly not scrapbooking papers…they are a cut above all that. They are colorful or stark white, highly textured, sometimes embossed with a sculptural motif, sometimes cut-out with a delicate lacey, light-as-air look, solid in color or  elegantly patterned, handmade (often embedding organic matter such as leaves, heavy fibers such as straw and fabric, even bugs and such in the papers) and they do sometimes have an ethnic theme indicating where they originated – Africa, India, Asia, France (where book binders used fine marbled ink papers) Japan, Thailand and many more amazing places. The colors, the feel and the quality of these art papers has enhanced enormously over the past decade or so. It is a big business, this paper production. Knowing your papers is a way to know the world!

On many occasions I find my first inspiration for a mixed media painting in a selection of papers – they speak to me – they beckon me – they seduce me into a flow of creative action that is almost beyond my own worldly confines. On a lovely summer’s day, if I am inside, I am painting….and that process can take me around the world.

Please enjoy some of my favorites with these photos from my studio…..

Artist & Author Jo Ann Brown-Scott

www.epiphanysfriends.com

http://joannbrownscottart.artspan.com

Book – The Creative Epiphany, Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations

by Jo Ann Brown-Scott, available on Amazon.com

 

Honored for the Second Time…Denver’s Painted Violin Fundraiser

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

 

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I am honored and excited to announce that for the second time I have been selected to participate in the Annual Painted Violin Fundraising Event for the Denver Young Artists Orchestra of Denver, Colorado. Each year the committee selects (it is not a contest – artists are invited) about 20 artists to paint, 3-dimensionally, an actual  violin that has been put out to pasture,  all 20 of which are then displayed and available for sale  at a selection of Denver art galleries in a traveling show lasting several months, ending in a gala event. The violins are sent out to artists many months in advance of when they must be completed and delivered, all painted and transformed into a masterful work of art with a theme, back to the committee. They will then be photographed for publicity and introduced to the public at the opening gallery show in the fall of the year.

The Denver Young Artists Orchestra (DYAO) was founded in 1977 and performs at Boettcher Concert Hall in the heart of Denver’s City Center, home of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. “DYAO’s mission is to provide the finest possible youth orchestra programs, inspiring and educating young musicians through the performance of great works of music and offering valuable cultural opportunities to the community.” Excerpted from the DYAO Brochure.

My violin arrived today! It is like Christmas!

The anticipation of opening the shipping box, then the violin case, to meet my particular violin…artists are told to expect anything – including the possibility of pathetically broken pieces of an old violin screaming to be rescued and given a new life. You must be prepared to work with what you get. Some of the creations from past years are quite spectacular – you can see all previous years’ honorees by visiting http://www.paintedviolin.com and/or http://www.dyao.org.

My previous violin, titled Scheherazade, was displayed in the 8th Annual Painted Violin Fundraiser ( see “painted violin” or “Scheherazade” in my archives) several years ago. The circumstances of that occasion are unusual and have almost a fairy tale quality in the way they unfolded for me. I will fill you in on that in the near future because it is a story worth repeating.

This newly arrived violin has been requested for the 12th Annual Event of the 2015-2016 Season. Photographs of the 12th Annual violins will not be available until 2015, so it seems that I have another YEAR LONG PROJECT on my art agenda. (Read about my Year Long Canvas Project in my recent blogs).

The above photos of my BEFORE violin, delivered this afternoon by Fed X, were taken as I opened the box to see her for the first time. I found a gorgeously weathered and worn old, old violin, abundant with character, inside a beaten up black leather case that has tape holding the handle together. The case, lined with dingy, torn turquoise felt (my mother’s favorite color) and laced with cobwebs and sawdust-like material collected in the corners had long been home for my violin. It was love at first sight when I took her out and inspected her. She has been so lovingly used – obviously – proudly – she provided many years of heavenly music. She is not sad, but wears her history like a patina of honor. There is a compartment that opens with the pull of a tab on its lid, and inside is her resin box. Two people have printed their names on her interior felt – COMPTON and HERRMANN – mysterious violinists who obviously put her to rigorous use. And there were probably more that just the two…

I am not permitted, by painted violin rules, to show you my progress on this project. But I will let you all know from time to time what is going on, without revealing any secrets or photos. I feel so fortunate to have it ahead of me. Once again the Art Buddha is smiling on me and my work with this special, inspiring project. I can already feel it.

 

My Passion For Art – Forever Green

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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THE WARMING                                            FALL’S DEBRIS

copyright 2014, Jo Ann Brown-Scott – 2 paintings in the Evergreen Center for the Arts Show, opening Friday, May 2, 2014

Here I am, YEARS later, and I have come, out of breath and energized, full circle  – but I am not as dizzy as I thought I would be.

Decades ago (1976) I was living with my family in Evergreen, Colorado, with a Fine Arts degree under my belt and nothing to do with it.  The word in the fine arts dept. of U. of Colorado, Boulder campus was, up to that time, and quite obviously, that historically women were not making  much progress in the art world. Slim to none, as a matter of fact. It was a realm ruled and managed by men and only sparsely sprinkled with women who painted primarily as a hobby and had somehow managed, against all odds (roughly the same as being hit by lightening) to make a name for themselves, purely by accident of course, in a man’s world. I knew that, and I still chose the school because of its art department. I wanted to attend a school where I could learn my passion. I was told to get my teaching degree because I would never be able to sell my art or to gain any kind of recognition as a female artist. I went against that grain of society, including my mother’s strong advice, got my art degree, did not get a degree in teaching, and proceeded to paint just because I loved it. Feeling as if I needed some refresher courses ( two lovely children, living in Evergreen) by 1976, I took some classes from an accomplished local artist named Jane McFadden. Her husband was a foreman on the legendary Mt. Evans Ranch.  (He looked exactly like the Marlboro Man…hard to concentrate – but I digress). Not intending to brag here, just to report what actually happened, I found myself in her class, on the first day, painting away and glad to be there, when Jane walked over and looked at me and said quite seriously for all to hear, “What are you doing in this class?”

Gripped with the fear of being thrown out for lack of talent, I answered sheepishly that I was there to learn….I wanted to paint well…..maybe I am not ready for this class….?

She said, “Jo, you could be teaching this class. I could learn from you. What are your goals with your art?”

II said that my goals were just to paint well.

She said, “If you want to paint well, you are already doing that. Wouldn’t you like to sell your work? If you would, I can  help you market your work…”

Within several weeks I had sold my first painting (except for one I sold in high school) in an Evergreen Summer Art Fair and was on my way to  having a fulfilling, marketable art career. Intermittent but fulfilling. I put my passion for art on hold at several junctures in my life which in retrospect now seems downright stupid. But we live and we learn. At the time I thought I was placing my emphasis on the right things. But overall, in the larger picture, I have had a long-lived art career and have always been able to sell my art. Many thanks to Jane McFadden for igniting the passion and the desire to SELL MY ART. The flame has never gone out. She is my hero – the first of several who took me aside through the years and demanded that I take my art seriously.

This Friday night at the Center for the Arts Evergreen Show  http://www.evergreenarts.org  I am honored to have 2 paintings juried into the show. It is a significant event for me because I moved away from Evergreen in 1986 or so (?) and since that year I have moved about 10 times, all over the damn country, mostly following men I loved who had the “bigger career”. The most recent move being to northern California, where I lived for 3 years before returning to the Denver area last July, 2013. I do believe that I am close enough to Evergreen to call it full circle. Wow – it is so good to be home.

As of today I am changing the focus of this blog site to more specifically reflect what I am personally doing with my art – the first and most long-lasting love of my life. The everlasting passion that has been there for me through thick and thin, through tragedy and joy, around and above all other activities that I love to do. It has outlasted several men, major geographic moves, health issues, deaths, feast, famine, mother nature and temporary flights of fancy. It is the rock solid foundation of who I really am.

I will take you along with me and tell you what I am achieving with my art.

It’s time for me to go insane with it – to throw myself at it and give it my all.

If not now, when?

 

For inquiries about this art, the YEAR LONG CANVAS, and others, contact me through this blog.

My art can also be seen at http://www.artspan.com – go to the category of Mixed Media, click on my name in ARTISTS and it will show you 3 of my images – click on any one of them and it will open my entire website.

You can also visit my art/literary website at http://www.epiphanyfriends.com

 

 

Art at the Speed of Life

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Mixed Media Collage titled Life Weavings by Jo Ann Brown-Scott copyright 2014

It occurs to me that the Year Long Canvas of which I have been writing in my recent posts is humming along at the speed of life – one day at a time – with some days more attentively dedicated to it than others. What else can a painting ask for? I mean really, I have worked on many canvases for months, on and off, off and on, and at the end the best I can do is to call it DONE, with many unrealized possibilities for its final form still floating around in my brain. In my sleep. In my waking hours too. But I had reached my limit of endurance for working on it and so it stays where it is for all eternity…I have a long way to go before I make that decision on the Year Long Canvas.

All you can do in life is to take each day, doing the best you can, 24/7, under the circumstances of the situation you have to work with. That is the best scenario you can hope for with any of your endeavors. You cannot be expected to perform based on information you do not yet have….you have only the NOW’s worth of information to go on.

It you look back at any kind of big thing or event or occasion or circumstance in your entire life, (and this usually happens when you can’t sleep at about 3 am) and you begin to second-guess the way you handled it, questioning the decisions you made at the time, and believing that you might have done better in hindsight, try to remember all the extra-curricular stuff that was going on in your life at the time. Chances are you had a lot going on – a lot to deal with – many shades of gray to be considered. All of that factored in to the way you handled things at the time. There was more going on than just the activity in the center ring at your circus of life. You were juggling and trying to keep a lot of balls in the air.

So go easy on yourself. I am certainly trying to do that myself. Seems to me that our lives are all like paintings, and we have a lifetime to paint them with endless possibilities for the composition. We make choices based upon what we know at any given time.Then we make more alterations, more changes, more adjustments and we paint some more, eliminating the negativity and giving prominence to the positive. We brighten the color, then we tone it back down. We try new things or we revert to an old idea and make it new again. This is art at the speed of life and life at the speed of art. I think it’s all the same thing.

The Year Long Canvas Project #5 – Taking Off

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Canvas in progress, not yet titled, copyright 2014, Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Things are finally beginning to take shape – the composition has gained complexity, additional depth, and more color without losing its rhythm and movement. It is still recognizable from last week, but at some point it will give up its former identity and be in the witness protection program….my way of saying that it will have a whole different look, probably. That is very likely to happen with a year to go.

I am pleased with the progress this week, but already wondering about how I will add another warm color to all these cools….what intensity, what shades, what COLOR? I really don’t want the Naples yellow to be the only sunny color. Although it could. But the artist says she wants more color.

Last week the painting that resulted AFTER I stopped working on this year long canvas was pretty cool – it can be seen in the #4 post – and the same is true this week. I am working on another 24×30 canvas at the same time I work on this one and it is going to be a fine painting, I think. I am not quite ready to go public with it, and this post is supposed to give center stage to the year long canvas, so….we shall see.

Abstract art is supposed to work from any orientation – whether  you turn it upside down or rotate it sideways. As you can see, there is very little happening in the upper portion of this canvas, and that issue must be addressed soon. It’s never a good idea to get too far along and still have such a void in one large area – it makes you desperate to fill it up at some point, and then whatever you do to it looks like an afterthought rather than an integral part of the composition. Right now it is screaming for my attention…and I am not answering yet, living on the edge of a decision about what to do to it.

This entire canvas screams at me sometimes. I hear it calling for attention and yet I can’t run ahead too fast. A year is a VERY long time. You would think that the larger the canvas the easier the challenge, since you would have such a vast area in which to screw up and figure out how to fix it, time and time again as the months go by. But if you remember, my instructor told me not to add the challenge of SIZE to an already difficult assignment. So here we are at 24×30 and every single minute stroke shows up. You cannot sneak anything in there without it being noticeable. Idiotic moves will show….and the idiot has to correct them. I realize that there is no failure with this project, only learning experiences, but even so there will be days when I am not at all happy with what has happened to the canvas by my hand, on my watch.

I am going on a walk now and I am going to see if I can find the art Buddha to come along, because this abstract world is enough for now.

Creativity – Surprisingly Human…

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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mixed media painting by Jo Ann Brown-Scott copyright 2013

Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force. He who knows this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations. He who does this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his mental powers. (James Allen)

Many articles are written about creativity. It seems rather a newish thing, that after centuries of witnessing its manifestations but not bothering to stop and figure out what the internal dynamics of it are, we now seem to have the time to pick it apart and examine it more closely. Everybody wonders how it happens – what facilitates it, who gets it, how do we nurture it, does it peak and then decline with age, how it can be enhanced and how to increase its potential.

First of all, everybody gets their fair share because it awarded free at birth – absolutely no one is born without it. The degree to which it shows up depends upon which gene tendencies you begin to massage – because certain aspects of creativity can lay dormant if not discovered, acknowledged, encouraged, stroked and cared for. When I taught mixed media painting to adults, people came to my class who had been CEO’s of corporations, high earners and achievers, outstanding in their fields which of course requires enormous vision and creatiity. But they had waited until their retirement years to tentatively tap the latent but strong desire they had kept hidden to someday learn to paint. They had been extremely creative in other areas of their lives to the point where no one had a single clue they secretly wanted to paint. The desire had been put on the shelf or choked out entirely for years, so  that ambition of a different caliber could take the lead at the exclusion of all else.

The creativity was bound to come out sooner or later…or was it? We hear all the time about people who discover they can sing, dance, write, paint and numerous other creative activities well into their adult lives, and I say what a shame that they waited so long. I wish more people would live the wondrous, colorful world of creativity all along the journey and not confine it to the last couple chapters of the book of life. Think of it! Life is all about the journey…living in Technicolor is of great importance.

We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint box. And, for this, Audacity is the only ticket. (Winston Churchill)

There is no secret formula for being highly creative. The habits of the most gifted creative people vary enormously – they are observed and envied, scrutinized and examined by people who want more of what they see. The trick to being creative and using the potential that is already there inside you is to dig deep and know yourself. Define what you desire, ask yourself if it is true and appropriate to who you authentically are (because not every one of us has exactly what it takes to be a Steven Spielberg) and what you are unconsciously drawn to, and give it some oxygen. Bring it out to the light of day. It does not have to crowd out everything else, to the extent that you drop whatever else you were doing and give it your complete 100% ALL  (although that has worked for many people) but it does mean that you must give it a fighting chance to be heard, seen and nurtured. You have to be willing to bring it out of hiding and show it to the world, unapologetically, unselfconsciously, and even proudly, as you sharpen your skills and learn. You cannot be timid – you must be strong – gutsy –  not easily discouraged – able to listen to criticism –  and you must have confidence and trust yourself even on the days when you are less convinced that what you are offering to the world is worthy of attention. Creative people make mistakes, get embarrassed, sometimes make fools of themselves all the damn time – even the best of them. But they keep going. They have tenacity. They are resilient.

But you knew all that, right?

A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself; it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself. (Pema Chodron)