What Makes You Happy, Creatively?

What makes you happy, creatively?

For most of my life, words have been the creative fun in my world… playing with words, mixing them up, creating new ones, teaching the fun of them to others….

But colors and shapes have always caught my eye, too …. like whispers of fun, kaleidoscopes of color catch my attention, draw me in, make me smile.

From food to photos, architecture to artwork, greeting cards to crayons, books to bikes … I am enamored with colors, shapes, and textures.

So I guess it shouldn’t have come as any surprise when I began dabbling creatively with ink, paint, crayons, color pencils, and bits of fabric. I suppose it was a natural progression, a matter of time… when my yearning for all things colorful would collide with my fondness for words.

I’m not really sure why I’m writing about this today… maybe just because it IS part of my process. Whenever my husband and I talk about my latest creative projects, he asks, “Does it make you happy?” (already knowing the answer)

“Absolutely!”

“That’s all that matters,” he says with a big smile and a warm heart. Thank you, dear husband.

I often think of Grandma Moses, whose artistic endeavors began at 78, after spending a lifetime caring for family and farm. It seems (I didn’t know this until today) that she disliked knitting and sewing, traditional crafts for women of the time, but began making needlework pictures and quilts that depicted her farm life. When arthritis made the task impossible, she took up painting at the suggestion of others.

An artist was born.

Using old house paint and various materials for substrates, her art came from found objects and materials. Hmmmm…. sounds familiar! 🙂

While I’m certainly no Grandma Moses and she was a tad more seasoned than me when she began, I do feel a kinship to a woman who discovered her creative passion in a chapter highlighted by life experience and frequent contemplation.

With time and patience, and always believing, you never know what you might discover….