“If we only see things through the cold-eyed lens of factuality and don’t listen to the yearning and screaming of unexpressed feelings, life may remain bleak.”
– Erik Pevernagie
GOOD MORNING!
Only when I finally listened to that yearning tug to paint again, did my life become excitingly vibrant—in every area of my life. Three years before, I kept having this feeling and vague vision of my arm swooping up very quickly on a very large canvas with a paintbrush in my hand. I wondered what that meant. I hadn’t painted in years and when I had painted with oil and watercolor years before for many years they were all painstaking, careful, strokes achieving representational works. I remembered one of my college art teachers beckoning us to paint rapidly to keep our thoughts from interfering and creating intentional creations instead of painting from our inner being (whatever that meant). I now know what he meant and it is very freeing and life-giving to paint from that place of feeling and passion.
Now I also LIVE from that feeling place that first drew me to painting and art and being my authentic self, the person I was born as. I am using the skills I learned from my teachers and from my experience, but I am regaining the pure joy of being me and using that to paint with all the wonder of exploration and expression. Painting is once again as dear to me as it used to be before I got so dominated and concerned with “doing it right”. I paint from a more authentic and joyful place rather than to satisfy some external standard or gain some outside approval. Remember the movie and song Born Free? We are born free, how great to rekindle that original passion and wonder and put that ahead of technique or rules or the lenses of others.
So here’s the tip:
- Appreciate all that we have learned from conditioning.
- Evaluate our conditioning (from others’ lenses) and decide what our lens is. Decide what WE want to keep and live by rather than blindly doing what we have been told. That means REALLY growing up. Become your own authority.
- Choose your lenses rather than just wearing the ones someone else put on you.
- Be open to picking up other lenses (maybe ones you never realized were there).
- Live Freely from YOUR inner being – YOU GET TO BE VIBRANT!