Follow your bliss...: Inspiration and the things that I have no words for

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Inspiration and the things that I have no words for

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me -- shapes and ideas so near to me -- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught...I found I could say things with colors that I couldn't say in any other way -- things that I had no words for.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I have to attribute what I've done these past few years to these words of Georgia O'Keeffe...some time ago...oh, I think around 1990, I went back to making art after not making art for a bit of time...I never really stopped, but I wasn't getting anywhere seriously with it. I wasn't really looking and seeing anything that I wanted to see...I spent a lot of time copying pictures from photos that I took or copying something someone else wanted me to do (I did several portraits of pets, mostly cats). I bought the book Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters at a bookshop during a Sunday afternoon prowl with my Fred and proceeded to read it cover to cover and felt that special "tug" toward inspiration...well, that was around 1992 or so...it has been a lot of years of sloping various paint forms, making piles of pastel dust, and several volumes of sketchbooks full of inspiration before I came to these two little drawings using colors and textures, shapes and lines that I never knew how to translate from my mind to paper...until now. (I also took a couple of years off from making pictures to write my first three novels.) These things take time and patience...I've studied both...and I'm still learning what to do with what I have...

Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters by Georgia O'Keeffe

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I found this book during a Sunday afternoon bookstore prowl in the early 1990's, probably around 1992 or so...I read it cover to cover and found my way back to making art the way I wanted to make art, but I had to go through a lot of paper and canvas, paint and pencils before I really got to the core of what I wanted to make...it's a fascinating read and powerful, especially for the artist...

View all my reviews.

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Me and Fibromyalgia...the good news is, it's not going to kill me.

I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2007 after years of being told my illness was all in my head. My Fibro is everyday fatigue with body aches, mostly tolerable, but when I have a flare-up, which can be triggered by stress, hormones, or being over tired from over-doing it, I get the full body pain, including chest pains (yes, these are scary, like an elephant standing on my chest.) Thankfully, it doesn't hurt to take a breath, but I feel breathless, I just do yoga and breathing exercises to stretch and breathe to ease through the worst of it, NSAIDs help to cut the pain, and naps are always a necessary thing when needed (but hard to do while at the day job!) It's a balancing act to manage, I take advantage of the good days, lay low on the bad ones, and very often, push through in spite of the bad days...some mornings I wish I could stay in bed, but I'm glad that I get up and about, very often 'the kinks' work themselves out. I refuse to take the recommended pharmaceutical band-aids on the market, I tried one once, and I don't like feeling like a zombie. I keep active with my creativity, I think that's the key to my overcoming this obstacle every day...and I have my Fred and our son, five cats, and one dog named Max.