CHANGE AND ITS AFFECT ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS

This is my mom. She passed away March 6 at 11:30pm. There is no greater thing we can do in this life than to love and be loved. Sounds easy enough, but there are so many competing interests. Our careers and access to this global world take us travelling and we often move far away from our family. Since I was a little girl I loved to travel and I was always finding ways to leave home for a while. The last couple of years I spent living in the same city as my family and I spent a lot of time with my mom. I was able to spend each day and hour with her at the end of her life. It was such a gift for me to help her, to provide what comfort I could and to just be with her while she travelled her final journey. Peace resides in my heart and I imagine her running and playing with a dozen dogs in a big dog park in the sky; finally without the hinderance of her body, which caused her so much pain.

How are you affected by the death of a loved one? How about separation or divorce? How about losing a job? These are all things that have landed on my plate over the last year. I have felt a whole array of emotions through all these changes and some of them are sorrow, anger, frustration, uncertainty and confusion.

But honestly, I need to confess something to you.

​Overall, I feel such lightness and joy. I feel grateful to be alive to be healthy, to have people in my life who care for me and very grateful for my curiosity and desire to create art. My curiosity and desire to create has grown stronger this year and maybe it is because so many other things have fallen away. Maybe because change is a sharpener of our senses and we see things with more clarity or at least from a different angle. Maybe because creating art provides me with such comfort. I suppose it is all true.

Today I am stronger painter. I feel it when I move the paint around my canvas. I feel a certain stillness when I work. I can see tone and composition a little better. I’m excited to create new work and to share it with the world. I hope my words and my work can somehow bring you some joy and some inspiration in your life. I also send my love, condolences or congratulations to any of you who have also experienced world altering changes in your life over the last year.

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