Just Do It

I often felt that I was literally losing my mind.  Then one day I talked to a lady who was selling her flower shop.  She said she told her husband that she had to have a place to continue her passion or her soul would die.  I automatically connected with her.  I knew at that moment what was wrong with me.  My soul was dying.  I had let obstacles keep me from creating and in doing so the creative juices had stopped flowing and my soul was dying. 

That is when I really got into taking pictures – thousands of them.  But what good are pictures if you don’t share them with others?  So I started posting them on Facebook and it was so much fun to have other people enjoying them.  But I still felt empty.  I needed something that was a total expression of me; something that used my brain, heart and hands. 

I had painted in high school and loved it.  My parents gave me a wooden case containing oil paints for the first Christmas after I got married.  It was the greatest gift because it said they believed in me.  But life happened and the painting stopped.  When the kids were pretty well grown I took up craft painting but it wasn’t the same.  Something kept telling me to paint.  Then one day I saw this quote:

“If you hear a voice within say ‘you can paint’ then by all means

paint, and that voice will be silenced.”  Vincent Van Gogh

Yea right!  Just paint!  Where?  On the kitchen table?  In the dark basement? Who are you kidding – you can’t paint -- I kept telling myself.  I used every excuse I could come up with and then I read another quote (I think God sends me quotes when he wants me to understand what he is trying to tell me)…..

“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way.

If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”  Jim Rohn

That is what I was doing.  I was finding excuses.  So I went to the basement, cleaned off the desk, got out the brushes and the acrylic craft paint and started painting.  The first two I throw away.  This is the third attempt.  I didn’t finish it.

The Lake (unfinished work)

We went on a camping trip to the farm.  The ticks were awful and then it rained…. a lot! I was stuck in the camper. I sat at the little table and watched the grass wave.  I looked at all the beautiful colors all around me.  The paints came out and this picture came to life.  It wasn’t very good but I was feeling better having actually finished a picture.

Barn by creek

Looking out the window, I saw the old farm gate.  I also watched the beautiful sunset that night.  They were the inspiration for this painting.  I actually had now finished two and I was learning how to work with acrylics.  I was really starting to feel the creative juices starting to flow again.  It felt so good.

Gate at sunset

When I got home I went to Wal Mart and bought an easel.  It was the first time I had ever used one.  I soon fell in love with it.  The lighting in my dark basement was so much better using the easel and I wasn’t all cramped up on the desk.  It was so fun to go down there and paint in total silence or with my favorite music playing softly.

Barn at sunset

I was drawn to a stack of old Birds and Blooms magazines that I had thought about throwing away.  I picked one up and thought that it would be fun to paint one of the birds.  This painting is my favorite so far, but then birds are some of God’s most beautiful creatures. My Grandmother and Mother could name every bird that they saw.  As for me I just like to watch them and occasionally I can capture one with my camera.  They just fascinate me.

 Bluejay

When we throw away our excuses and just do things because a little voice is telling us to, we come alive and our juices start to flow.

"There may be a great fire in our hearts,

yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it,

and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke"

Vincent Van Gogh