Hello! So many things are going through my head right now.   Finally, after all the rigmarole of the past three years, we are heading out into the world once again with tons of art for art fairs, farmers and crafters markets and maybe even galleries and museum classes.  Im excited.

     Its taken some time to get my head in the right space to do this art thing in a way thats meaningful. Its easy, when your trying to sell your art, to get stuck in a rut of just making, making, making. The joy and meaning that was there in the beginning starts to fade and it becomes a task to be completed instead of the process of creating. And that process is just so important. 

     The reason I ever put brush to canvas, pencil to paper, pen to journal was to heal in the beginning. It wasnt about the finished product, it was about the process. It was about the utter glee of combining color and shape to tell a story, express a feeling, or deliver an answer to a problem that I had no words to express. It was about the confidence I gained everytime I learned a new skill or got feedback from other artists. It was about community, and self care and how I personally expressed how I saw the world. It was about the things I learned from doing it like how to manufacture joy, how sitting in a creative moment can bring clarity , how to laugh and cry with color and how to be a risk taker and an experimenter. It pulled me out of crippling social anxiety and I found friends.

     The first time someone offered to pay me for my art, I experienced a sence of accomplishment  and pride and after another artist sponsored me into my first Gallery, i was unable to keep up with how quickly my art sold.  I still just kept creating from that place where I felt joy and healing. I was making a bit of cash and still full of happiness. It was perfect. 

      But after a while, when covid came and shut us all down, after we moved for my husbands job( so happy  he was still employed), after starting all over in another place; My heart was not in it and the idea of starting all over  was overwhelming.  So I just didnt.  I didnt want to fight covid, and I didnt want to get involved again only to loose my community once again. 

     I sold a few things here and there and made things for family and played in my art journals but nothing that felt as if I was growing. I was kinda art numb for a while. Not really making new art, but repeating what I had already done, trying to reconnect with that time and that feeling of glee and creative growth.  Then it occurs to me that the reason i wasn't growing was because I gave up forward thinking and got stuck in my grief. I was stagnant and happy to sit in my own sadness to recreate what was lost. I never found it. Only a vague  smoky remnant of what was crept in long enough to remind me I didnt have it anymore. 

I did this for way too long. 

  So I decided to accept that for a while,  to go ahead and cry it out and give myself permission to do that was exactly what I needed. My mom used to say the postman wont deliver if you dont get that dog off the porch. I needed to do the work to get the dog off the porch so that I could experience the newness and forwardness that God and the Universe have for me.  #creativeblock

     I am in a better creative place now. Dreams of new art and art ideas and plans to create and teach others to do the same fill my head now. Im learning new things, taking new chances and seeking out community once again.  Im going to use this space to keep you informed of the creative content of 2023: where we go, what we learn, create and sell and of course what joy we can manufacture.

xoxo, Sharon