PAINTING!

So these last few weeks have been awesome in terms of my creativity. For so many years, since my early twenties really (so about ten years) I have felt my creative self sit inside me curled into a little ball, rocking itself gently as it hid from the world. Why I don't know. Before that, I was so into my art, and my creative side was a huge part of how I defined myself. It was an intrinsic part of my identity, and one that I cherished. In fact, now that I cast my mind back, it was one of the few parts of me I was really proud of.

Then something happened. Many things happened. My life kinda fell apart, slowly but oh so surely. The house of cards within which I had lived for so long finally collapsed under the pressure of a family divorce, a drug addiction, the death of friendships, and the spectacular demise of my academic career as I sunk deeper and deeper into nowhere. And along with it all, my creative side just crumbled. Many people use their creativity to help them deal with hard times in life, to express themselves and process traumatic events, but I think my low self esteem resulted in me being too afraid to produce anything, in case it wasn't perfect. And a crushing perfectionism is a sure way to kill any creative spark that occasionally would rear its head.

So there has been an ache in my heart for years as I listened to the echoes knocking around in the vast empty hall of my creative self, so big and yet so empty, so full of promise and potential and yet dormant, seemingly lifeless.

Until recently! I had an urge a few weeks ago to bring out my old watercolour paints (half of which had dried up and become hard little tubes of brittle colour) and do something. And unlike the times in the past when I would bring out the paints or the pastels or the chalks or the fabric or the beads, and play for a day, then leave them untouched for weeks until I finally packed them away again, this time I have been doing a little bit each day and somehow, SOMEHOW, the urge to paint and keep going has stayed with me! It has filled me with such a feeling of coming home to myself, such a feeling of wholeness and fullness of being ME. I've been having a ball.

So now that Indi is old enough to potter and play on her own, with the cat's water bowl and the wading pool and all her outdoor toys, under our lovely pergola out the back, I sneak five or ten minutes to paint here and there, and it's great! So here are some of the bits and pieces that have come of it.










And my favourite....