“Every artist dips his brush into his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
-Henry Ward Beecher-
What color has your brush dipped into with this new year's beginning?
I posted this on my facebook page close to the first day of January 2013. It spoke to me deeply when I first read it. I subscribe to the belief that we are all artists. Some of spend more time in the studio than others, but that does not qualify us as better artists, just more trained, more practiced.
There were many “likes” on that fb entry and some fb friends took the time to express the color they were painting with as the new year began for them.
I have a confession, lest you think I am just so brilliant and wonderful and successful. At the present, I feel like the tip of my paintbrush has every color on it, leaving a grayish globby stroke on the page of my life. It’s like when you take all the beautiful play do colors and mix them together, which is so fun, but eventually the play do turns gray. And the play do turns hard and cold because there’s not much possibility in that gray play do.
Here’s why it’s gray. I have too many colors to choose from. I feel pulled and pushed as an artist. I long to get to a blank canvas with a simple palette of only two colors, three tops.
New fresh years have a way of causing an overwhelm. There is so much we are restarting, plugging into, taking on, hoping in, wanting to do. I have said too many “yeses” and very few “no’s”.
And eve now as I confess, I can hear a kind and wise mentor–“Clear the desk, Melea.” Which can be quite a literal task for a writer. Take everything off of that desk. Now evaluate what goes back on.
And so right after I finish this blog entry I am going to clear the desk! LITERALLY.
By clearing the desk, I will be able to prioritize what goes back onto this space that will prompt my soul as a writer and storyteller. It will feed me, propel me, speak to me, ground me.
Perhaps, there is some place in your life that needs a “clearing of the desk”… I urge you to not be dismayed by the date of January 20-something. It is still the new year and you are still an artist with the greatest of possibilities set before you in 2013
Oh, and I am going to throw out the play do and get a new fresh squishy set of colors. There’s nothing better than the feel and the smell of fresh play do!
HAPPY NEW YEAR! And may the story you live out this year change someone because I know it can…
Melea