Art Anchors My Life

Art anchors me so much. It has saved me from becoming swept away into a spiral of abandoned dreams.

Maya Angelou said, There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Art making for me is storytelling. I am a compulsive storyteller, a creative tale spinner who cannot remain caged from expressing the stories I carry.

Art helps me tell the stories to myself first and also to others.

I started writing again this past winter. I wrote thousands of words, some of them quite compelling. And yet it felt like I was going against the tide. I wanted the words to flow like the art does when I paint. I focus and settle into the flow state of art making and even if it is a bumpy process as sometimes it is, it is like riding through rapids on a river...always moving and flowing ahead. But writing felt more like an upstream paddle in the wind. Even when friends welcomed me into their forest home for a few days to write, it was more struggle than I wanted to admit.

And so, I stopped writing.

I held such high hopes to write something worthy and inspiring, something worth the investment of self-publishing.

I am not completely dead about writing. Maybe the timing was off... or maybe I'm already storytelling through art and writing my stories with colors instead of pages and written words are not my main storytelling magic for now.

"Paint your book," someone once advised me.

Art has saved me so much. Maybe art is what will again save the storyteller in me whose words lie buried in thick mud.

Perhaps I need to pay attention to where the stories within are making themselves known, through my art and through connection with presence and Speaking the stories instead of writing them.

This is what happens in my art booth and presentations time and time again :: meaningful storytelling and inspiring connections.

Last week a beautiful trans woman wept as I told stories about body love and body shame. She hugged me after my presentation. It was a beautiful moment of the honor of being a storytelling mirror to another, that she is not alone in her journey.

Art is my mirror.

Art helps save me from the anguish of stories untold.

❤️