Make Believe
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My creative expression must
be the most important thing
in the world to me
if I am to live artistically,
and it also must not matter at all
if I am to live sanely.
Elizabeth Gilbert
It started with an imaginary friend, Illa. I was four, she was timeless.
I don't know where she came from, one day she was there; someone small just like me, someone secretly just for me.
She and I created alternative worlds to play in. We fabricated outrageous tales, went on forbidden adventures and escaped the chaos of a lonely life. I can't quite remember when she disappeared, just as she appeared, like a magic trick, she was gone.
The fairy tales may have stopped but my search for creative expression certainly didn't. In my twenties I used my body as a canvas and my wardrobe as the paint. Eventually I turned to more traditional tools; pencils, paper, paint, and here I am today.
The other day, my adorable Aunt (who unfortunately for me, lives an ocean away in Germany) apologized, in an email, that she didn't understand my art. I suggested she look through the lens of colors, lines, and shapes instead of the lens of realism.
We don't have to understand why we are drawn to a piece. Abstraction, in particular, is not meant to be understood through the reality of the visual world. Like poetry, it's meant to be filtered through the mind and felt in the heart.
When you heart speaks, listen, just rest there, it's amazing what may bubble up to the surface of the conscious.
