When I first started this blog last year, I don’t think it was really “me.” I had just opened my Etsy shop and read that blogging was something you were supposed to do in order to market yourself and get more views and hopefully more sales in your shop. I didn’t write a whole lot on my blog before I took a break, and everything I did write was honest--what I really thought and felt. But I think that I was kind of outside of myself in a way; like I was standing back, looking at my life and my identity, squinting just a little so that I would look just the way I imagined I should be. I guess it’s probably hard not to do that when you’re blogging since you know that others probably will be reading what you write.
I’d like to start over in a way, try to create something that doesn’t necessarily fall into any sort of category or theme, but something that is just truly me. I’m not writing a blog because that’s the thing you’re supposed to do or in order to make more sales or whatever. I have always had a heart to connect with people through my creative endeavors. I was just talking to my husband last night about this; we were reading this artist’s statement about how her work is all about something along the lines of angst, death, and self-destruction, and I was joking about how my art was about self-destruction too because at that moment I was piecing together a sketch I’d been working on during the day that my 15 month old daughter got a hold of and ripped apart. It was my fault that she’d literally “loved it to pieces” because she was so excited when she saw what I was working on (it’s a peacock and she LOVES animals and just started saying the word “bird” this week) that I let her look at it and touch it…I just couldn’t bear to say “no” and take it away from her because I loved her simple, childlike wonder and joy in it.
My art is certainly not about death and self-destruction, though I’m sure most of us have gone down those roads in one way or another. My art is simple and pretty, lighthearted and even frivolous a lot of the time. My art reflects my heart in these ways; my lifelong desire to remain as a child in the ways that I laugh and love and soak up life. But my heart is deep too, and I have experienced deep hurts and loss just as most everyone has. Painting and writing have been the ways that I deal with those things, so those elements are often beneath the surface of my work even if unconsciously expressed.
Mostly, my art is an expression of simple moments in time. It’s about capturing an image in my mind’s eye, or the expression on a loved one’s face, or the unexpected intricacy in the simplest things in life. My art is simple and happy and I create it because I love it.
Now, if it can eventually help pay the bills…bring it on. But I will be happy and endlessly creative even if it doesn’t.
