As I sit here listening to the white-crowned sparrows singing and feeding just feet away from me, my mind wanders. I try my hardest to stay in the moment and enjoy the sights and sounds; no matter how hard I focus, my mind drifts towards images of digital art and the next project I want to start. Darn. Art got the best of me again.
Even in the garden, today, art is winning. Winning over sunshine, warm breezes, tasty iced tea and birds. And if truth be told, it has taken hold of my soul and shows no signs of letting go. If I could explain it, living with art goes something like this:
1) Every moment of every day is filled with images that have a life of their own and they stand in line in the recesses of your mind, waiting to be born.
2) You’re only really happy when you’re creating and even then, you wish you could be this happy doing everything else or that there was nothing else that needed doing so you could just make art.
3) Even in your happiest moments away from art, you catch glimpses of beauty so wonderful that it inspires yet another piece that you must now create.
4) You negotiate with yourself ways to get all else out of the way so that you can get back to your art as soon as possible, but ultimately other parts of your life lose that battle (especially housework).
5) Even when you have a huge repertoire of artwork, you still feel compelled to create more because the images keep coming into your mind, even in dreams at night.
6) You never really feel that a piece is finished, so you must intuitively abandon it a point in time and hope it’s the right time.
7) You actually work longer hours at something that, for a long while doesn’t even come close to giving you an income like a day job that would slowly squeeze the life out of your soul, but for some reason you never tire of it.
8) You live and breathe art, every moment and it makes you happy and sad all at once but you will never look back on this path with regret.
9) Recognition, praise or glory are not what drive you to live this life of seclusion and wasted guilt. There’s no glamour. You create because it’s your purpose and that silent knowing keeps you going.
As quickly as my mind left this perfect moment to confess what art is for me, I’m brought back by a sound from above. I sip my cold drink and catch myself smiling. My laptop comes out of sleep mode and the desktop wallpaper is one of my winter pictures (and I wander off again and think to myself ‘I really must update this picture, or touch it up, or...’). Sigh. Overhead, an eagle soars and with it, my heart.
