The Saturday Morning Post: Finding the Artist Within You

Esther Miller started me on the journey to discover the artists within me.  She was a dear neighbor, for about 8 months of my teenage years.  The second and third winters that my family spent in Florida, when I was in the 9th and 10th grade, we rented a condo on the Indian River in Titusville, Florida directly across the river from the space center. Mrs. Miller lived next door.  She was in her 80's, a bit eccentric, smoked, collected antiques and painted to relax.  She described herself as a successful widow.  Her first husband died and left her a few hundred acres of land.  She used that to bankroll her second husband into a VW, Porsche Audi dealership, that she owned and her sons operated.  She had moved to Titusville to get out of the son's way, people would call her if they didn't like the deal they got from her son, so she bought a condo and moved away. 

She was talented, she did landscapes featuring the flatlands of inland Florida.  I was intrigued.  She told me where the local art supply store was.  I bought a starter kit, and she coached me - taught me to blend colors and to paint from the heart.  To put on canvas what I feel.  To relax with the media, and not worry about what the end product looks like.  For her it was about the process, she had more art than walls, when she finished the new work it went in the closet, or under a bed, or in the back seat of her VW Squareback hoping that someone would please take it.  

I painted for about 4 years, trying landscapes and portraits.  I would best describe those as artistically handicapped.  Near the end of that I moved onto abstracts. All of those early works are lost to time.  Left behind, given away. 

Photography filled the void on and off for decades, and continues to do so.  I love photography, painting helps me to understand colors in ways that photography never could. 

Then life moved on, I didn't paint for decades. Fourteen years ago after I moved into the Condo, and while Sweetie Bear was still teaching and living in the other house eight months out of the year, I decided I wanted to try painting again.  I bought another starter kit for painting, and splurged,  and bought a proper studio easel.  I don't remember what I paid, I remember cringing when I clicked "buy it' on Amazon.  It was the best thing I ever did for painting.  My bedroom is large, I have space for a nice desk and to paint at the end of my bedroom.  

There have been a couple of off periods when I didn't paint, and a couple of very intense periods when I did one after another, after another.  I have long ago run out of space.  If you like one, please come ask for it and take it with you.  

Am I any good? That is debatable.  I enjoy it, I find it relaxing, I see the world in new ways, by trying my hand at trying to represent it in some way.  

Each of us has an artist within us, find ways to let it out.  Good, bad, or indifferent, it is your art, it is your dialog with the inner and outer world.