Lately I have thoroughly enjoyed crafting. Trips to the fabric store, busting out the sewing machine, passing along gifts, and all in all just CREATING. I sometimes get frustrated with the term "artist". I went to art school and I make art so I am labeled an "artist". Yet friends and family don't always find validity in my creativity unless I'm painting. As if PAINTING is the be-all and end-all of art. Art is only valid if it's in paint form. Apparently.

"Art For Art's Sake" was a philosophy that came about in the early 19th century that artists adopted when they were challenged if their art didn't have a moral or purpose. They just wanted to make art for the sake of making art. No frills, no gimmicks. So why can't that be said for forms of art? Why can't sewing be art? Why can't drawing be art?

Why can't I create just for the sake of creating?

Oh bother. I enjoy my time at home with Eva so much, that the 5 hours a week I spend at Lenscrafters selling glasses is a big chore. I might even go so far as to say a sacrifice. I've been selling glasses for 2 years as a part time job and I'm dang sick of it. If I have to work, I'd much rather be teaching. But alas, my teaching certificate has yet to come in the mail and the school year is almost over.

It's kind of a strange story how I became a teacher. All throughout my time in school, the idea only crossed my mind when I had a great teacher or a creative lesson...."hmmm...If I ever become a teacher I'd do something like that." But I didn't actually consider being one. I always wanted something creative and artsy. Like for a while I wanted to be an interior designer....and then I changed to a makeup artist....and then it was a clothing designer. And when I graduated school and applied to art school I was going to be a graphic designer. Two years in art school taught me there was WAY more to art than I thought, and I actually hated graphic designing. When I graduated my program there, it was like "what now?"

I searched around for my options until I found a University which offered a combined degree in Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Education. I figured I could get my BFA and if I didn't become a self-sufficient artist or didn't want to work in an art gallery I'd always have a teaching degree to fall back on.

That summer I was living with my step-dad. I had never found a church I had liked in that city and could never seem to find time to go since I was always working Sunday mornings. My boss at Tim Horton's invited me to come with her to the Saturday night service at her church. They were having a special speaker from the UK. Turns out it was a woman who was gifted in prophetic words and after a very brief message, she and her team went around praying for people in the church and speaking words of prophecy over them. I had never experienced this or even seen it, and I was intimidated but wanted to know if I was doing the right thing by going into teaching. She finally came up and prayed for me. She blew me away when she started to tell me things about my relationship with my boyfriend at the time, and spoke words over that. If you've never had someone speak prophetically into your life, it is an absolute give from God and will blow your mind to pieces. I sat crying and contemplating what she had told me. I knew the relationship with my boyfriend had to end and she had just confirmed it.

As the night went on I was still feeling antsy about teaching. Was I doing the right thing? Was I making the right decision for my future? I stayed after the service with a friend and had juice and cookies while we chatted with some of the team from the UK. My disappointment was high because nothing had been spoken to me about teaching and my friend and I were ready to leave. As we walked to her car, this lady came running out after me "Excuse me!! Excuse me!! Can I just talk to you for a minute?" She asked as she looked directly into my eyes.

"Me?"

"Yeah." She said. "I kept looking over at you tonight and I felt strongly that God has some words for you. I just didn't find the time to tell you until now. Will you come inside so I can pray for you?"

"Okay" I replied as my heart pounded. What could God possibly have for me? This woman and another lady from her team started praying over me and I immediately started crying. The intensity of the moment was too much. She started to tell me she saw a vision of me with kids....older kids and younger kids.....they were doing art and I was teaching them. She said God wanted me to have peace in my decisions. I was going to be a positive influence to kids.

I couldn't stop crying. These women didn't know me from a hole in the ground and no one knew my unrest about going into teaching. This was fully and completely 100% from God.

I was supposed to teach art. To kids.

And now I do. And it makes me so happy I could burst. I feel utterly and totally fulfilled when I am doing it. There is no other career in the world that I would want.

...that dang teaching certificate better come soon.

I've had a lot of issues with art for about 3 years. I haven't painted much since the Beloved painting. It started with me becoming distant with God.

I had been making art for a couple years and fully knowing and realizing I was not an artist without God. I don't have good ideas, I'm not creative, I'm not talented...unless I'm praying and dedicating my art to the Lord and realizing I'm nothing without Him. Through me God created some beautiful things:



The stuff that was coming out of me were acts of worship.

But then around 3 years ago, my relationship with God started to suffer. I'm not going to get into it, but it has really sucked. I don't spend time with Him, I don't spend much time praying and I haven't made art.

Recently things with God are starting to get better. I have a new perspective of God, one where He is the Almighty glorious creator. He is merciful and full of grace. Me "coming back" to Him is nothing I can work towards. There's no work involved because Jesus already did the work by dying on the cross. I just have to accept that I suck...I am a sinner....I am nothing without Him and all I can do is receive His Grace. The new realization is bringing me back to a place of softness. Of understanding and a willingness to spend more time with Him. He is giving me creativity again. I have been making baby bibs and totally love it.

Chatting with Jacob & Lily this weekend, I was able to reflect a bit more on the art process. I told them about my Beloved painting and the pressure I feel to live up to the monetary value that's been placed on it. Karla told me that God did not intend for worship to have monetary value. Wow. That's a good realization to have. Kind of takes the pressure off me.

I have also realized I am a very self-conscious artist. I very much compare my work to other artists and try to think about how non-artists view my work....is it good enough? Do they see the work of an artist? How then does an artist view my work? Do they scrutinize it? Do they judge it? Blech. So much stupid comparisons....it's all crap. My art is supposed to be worship, and as such it's about the spending of time with God and not the finished product. I really need to remind myself of that.

So I do not regret not painting for 3 years. I would have been forcing something that couldn't be. I wasn't in the place with God to be doing it, so why do it. I've had so many people encourage me and beg me start painting again...but I really couldn't do it until I felt like God was giving me the go-ahead.

I'm starting to feel like now maybe he is. I want to start small. I want to move away completely from the style of painting I was doing before. My headspace is stuck in the box of that style and I don't know where to go from there. So I will start fresh. I'm going to start easy and paint a few baby room paintings. I'm going to continue to make baby bibs. I think all this is going to be good for me...get me back into the groove of things. And while I'm at it, I'm thinking of opening an etsy shop to sell my bibs and prints of paintings. I had been thinking about it for awhile now...my husband has been encouraging me and I've also gotten a lot of encouragement from friends. So I think I will.

My husband and I brainstormed ideas last night. We came up with one that we both think fits nicely. It needs to have dual purpose; it has to suit selling baby things and selling art. So what do you think of: Bleubyrd. (Pronounced "Bluebird" ...I just added a poll, so weigh in your two cents there).

So that's my art life in a nutshell. I'm happy to say that things...they are a changin'.

I started this drawing series 3 1/2 years ago. It began with the drawing on the very top.





I had just started dating Steve, and he had spent the weekend here in my city. We had both encouraged each other in our respective arts - him in making music, and myself in painting and drawing. As soon as he got home he was inspired to start writing a song. He wrote a beautiful down-tempo electronic song called "Isaiah 40" . He played it for me over the phone, and I almost cried I loved it so much.

A week later, I received a package in the mail. Inside was a cassette tape (I know only 3 1/2 years ago, and we're talking 80's technology here), labeled "Music To Paint To". I slipped it in my stereo and the very first song that came on was "Isaiah 40". I almost cried again.

The song was so inspiring to me. I rewound the tape, pushed play and sat down on my bed and started praying. I opened my Bible and started reading the scripture "Isaiah 40". I was blown away by everything, and as I prayed, I got out my pencil and some paper and started sketching. After sketching, I sat in my room and started coloring my sketch for hours. I didn't resurface out of my room until I had to. Any spare moment I got, I was in my room working on this little drawing.

The next time Steve was down visiting me, I showed the little drawing to him. He loved it. He said he saw music in the abstract lines and colors. What was amazing, was I hadn't even told him what it was about yet...that it had been inspired by his music.

I continued on like that with the little drawings. They weren't all inspired by music. This little guy...

...was inspired by a book Steve and I read. We were dating long distance, living a 5 hour drive away from one another. We talked on the phone everyday, and sometimes...we read. Steve couldn't believe that I had never read "The Chronicles of Narnia". They were his favorite books growing up, so he pulled out the first book "The Magician's Nephew" and began reading it to me. He read to me every night until we finished it.

There is a part of the story where the kids get transported to a forest. They walk around and there are pools of water everywhere. When they walk into a pool of water and slip on one of their colored rings, the pool transports them to another world. Each pool is a portal to a different world. The forest is called "The Wood Between the Worlds"...which is also the name of this drawing. In an abstract way, I wanted to capture the pools of water amongst the thick layers of trees.

This guy...

...believe it or not, was inspired by my Geography 1000 class of all things. My professor was talking about GIS Maps (I just went and dug out my old geography binder to remember what they were called!), and he showed us a bunch of slides of GIS maps. I thought they were so beautiful, they looked like art. So I came home and did my own abstract drawing inspired by those beautiful maps.

So that's where the drawings stopped that year. I got too busy and couldn't keep up. I was only able to do one or two more little drawings, but I wanted a whole bunch of them. I wanted like...30...hanging on the wall together.

Then a year and a half ago, I was taking my Senior Studio, and you have to propose to your professor what you are going to work on for the semester. I couldn't wait to pick these little drawings back up. So I also created these:

I have so many favorites from this series. Definitely the ones I have already shown you are my favorites, but then others like the orange and brown one; it reminds me of kidneys and a bladder floating around in someone's body. The water fountain coming from the sky I love too - and it's sister: the slash over the stripes. And as cheesy and cutesy as it is, I love the bottom purple flower. That one was inspired by the beat poet Bradley Hathaway (if you don't know who he is, you must check him out on myspace). He has a poem called "On Being Joyful and Content". The first lines of the poem go:

I'm ecstatic
And my thoughts are uncontrollably sporadic
But they are all centered around one center...

Joy

In plush ripe tones
Joy rushing through my bones!
If joy were a color it would be purple, pastel, pretty
Like old women and young children both wear on Easter
Smiling and having deviled eggs and drinking Kool-aid

I wanted the drawing to be plush, ripe purple...and pretty...and joyful.

They are all my favorites really. I just love this drawing series when I look at it. It makes me happy and content. Content with myself as an artist. I have been very angsty about my work in the last few years, but those little drawings give me a little peace.

I just wanted to share them with you.

I thought it was about time I wrote a post on art....this blog is called a "apaintersmind" isn't it?

This painting,

I started 3 years ago. Seriously.

It began just as a sketch. I was at church in worship, and I was inspired to sketch this image...so I did. I loved the little sketch, and during the sermon, our pastor Scott Williams got really passionate and started yelling "You are Wanted! You are Beloved!!" I thought it fit perfectly with my sketch, so I sketched the words "You are Beloved" next to it.

I knew I wanted to turn this sketch into a painting.

Only a week later, there was a youth conference at the Victory Church and I was asked to be part of teaching a workshop called "Creative Arts in Church". I came equipped with canvas, paints and some drawings and paintings I had created during worship. My husband and his worship band were doing all the music for the youth conference, and after I had taught the workshop, he asked me to stay for the evening for worship. Then he got the brilliant idea to ask his worship leader if myself and my friend Kendra could paint on stage during their worship set. This is something we would do at our own church The Gate, but we weren't sure how this Victory Church and all the people there would accept it.

We decided to go ahead with it. For an hour and a half Kendra and I painted on stage. I painted my "Beloved" sketch. After worship, I had SOOOOOO many people come up to me and tell me how touched they were by my painting, that my painting meant something to them. I also got OFFERS to buy it....we're talking like a thousand dollars! All it was was underpainting...I had barely even scratched the surface of this painting, and I had layers of paint to go. I was flattered that my painting had spoken to people, and I knew this painting was from God. I had ideas for where this painting would end up and how it would look when it was finished.

I think I got home with my painting and got overwhelmed. This painting had so much to live up to. It had a THOUSAND DOLLARS to live up to. So I didn't continue to paint it. I wouldn't go back to it until I felt myself as an artist could live up to the vision of this painting.

A year passed.

Then 6 months.

I got up the courage and put a few more layers of paint on the canvas. My husband told me he didn't really like the new paint.

So I left it alone.

And another year passed.

It's now been 3 years and that's all I have done on this painting. I still have people who remember this painting, and remember when I painted it during the worship service. I still have people offering me money for when I finish it. I have so much attachment to this painting. I have stressed and thought about it for 3 YEARS! When I do finally finish it I don't know if I can sell it and give it up.

I'm so torn over this painting. I want it to be finished...I think it is a powerful painting that others need to see. I just don't remember what I intended for it to look like.

This painting was the beginning of my break from painting. Maybe soon I will get back into it. Maybe soon this painting will see a few more layers of paint.

I can't sleep. I've been lying in bed and thinking about how uncreative I have been. I have all these people all around me telling me to paint and be creative and it just frustrates me.

I'm creatively dry. I'm trying hard to rekindle a desire to create. I feel like if I don't hurry up and do it soon, I'll lose out on so many works of art. But I can't force it. I tried to force it last fall when I was in Senior Studio...and I created some very mediocre paintings that disappoint me when I look at them.

But I am being stirred up a little bit. Lately there have been creative people around me that inspire me to try. I stepped outside tonight and breathed the warm October air. I just stood there and thought.

Maybe I could create again.

I just wanted to share a super fun project that I did with my grade 2's for art class....I wrote about it in much more detail here. I wanted to teach them the color wheel, so I brought RED, YELLOW and BLUE colored icing. The kids worked in partners and iced a cookie to represent these three primary colors. They then took a new container, and mixed red+yellow, blue+yellow, and red+blue to create the secondary colors...we also did more mixing to create the tertiary colors. The kids had a blast, and when it was all done they got to eat their colorful cookies! I not only impressed the kids with this project, but the other teachers too....they were wandering into my classroom and checking things out and kept saying "you need to give me a copy of this lesson plan!" It was one of the funnest days of teaching I have had.