I was thinking about the days I have spent learning to paint and draw, thinking about what brought me to start. I am aware that I still do not know a lot, even when I have invested in growing my skills, but I am also able to see that I know more than before.
I have always had this passion for art even though in the past I never took the time to sit and learn more about it. I just kept day dreaming about how awesome would be to learn how to paint and then seconds later I got busy with my life again. I have had these sporadic moments when I regretted not being proactive in that regard, but then again something else came up and I got entangled in life again.
When I was little I was fortunate to have a mom that cared about the things I liked so she took me to some craft classes without limiting our basics needs. Even though I enjoyed the classes, I was always like a little butterfly going from one place to another, learning from here and there without committing to a specific area, an specific craft. And my mom kept following me from place to place with the expectation that soon enough I would be moving to the next class available.
Decades later, surfing the web I stumbled upon Päivi Eerola’s classes from Peony and Parakeet and I checked her blog once in a while during that time. I always ended up looking at the courses she had for sale, I looked at the pictures she had of her art work and wished in my heart to join someday. I think my husband saw the same pattern every time until one day he asked me: Why don’t you buy a class? Until then it never occurred to me to make an actual purchase, I always stopped by just like when you pass checking the showcases at the mall, without the intention to buy something.
When he asked: Why? I couldn’t answer. I just didn’t know what stopped me from doing it, but his question brought to my memory the Christmas gift he gave me many years ago and how upset I felt that he got me a case with watercolour, acrylics and oils for me to give it a try. That day when I saw the gift I didn’t know why a felt so upset. My sweet husband was trying to be mindful and I couldn’t feel appreciation. It was until he posed the question when I understood why I got so upset and what restrained me from accepting it happily. It was the investment of time and money that would come after that, it felt selfish, it was a push to a leap that I wasn’t ready for, to receive that gift implied a commitment. I knew that in the past I always started things with a passion that devoured time and energy, with that intensity I worked and worked and made many pretty things until every desire faded away and I didn’t want to do it anymore.
I realized I was afraid, not afraid of failing, but afraid to give up, to drop everything and with that, the desire of learning… the dream of painting. It happened before in the 90’s, when I lived in France I prepared myself to take sketching classes, with great difficulty I purchased the material I needed for the class. I managed to go to my first class and after that day I never came back, I just let everything go. So here I was again, looking to a new start, but with the regret of the past, the lost time and the possibility that I wasn’t going to be able to continue past the exhilarating moment of the beginning. Afraid that after the first taste I was going to be satisfied and not to be excited anymore.
So that day, when Mark questioned me, I realized that to simply have a desire is not enough, that I needed it to take my dream to work on art and imbed it in my life, to use it as a way to release my thoughts and express feelings that words cannot describe. I came to the belief that this is a new language and I wanted to make it part of myself, part of my normal routine and that was going to be the force that would keep me going. So I decided to jumped in. A jump that I made with the support of my husband.
Almost two years later, here I am with my heart content, giving my soul a new way to express and looking forward to see what this new season has for me.
