Entry for January 12, 2007 - Being an Artist...pt. 1

Someone once asked me when I knew I wanted to become an artist. I thought to myself, 'that's kind of a strange question...I have always been an artist, I never really became one.'

Oh, I know what she meant! She was really just asking 'Was there ever a defining moment in your life when you thought to yourself, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to be!'??
And, granted, when I was three years old my skills were a far cry from what they may be now...I don't mean to sound boastful, that's not it at all...it's just that I have been practicing my drawing since I was three, and I am now, after many years of hard work trying to get it right, fifty-six. So for over a half of a century, I have been practicing!
Every artist will tell you that it takes him or her a lifetime to 'get it right'...even the likes of a Marc Chagall or a Claude Monet (quotes below) were the first to admit that they had not achieved the perfection they sought ~ they were merely practicing!
My muse is forever turned on. It follows in my head throughout my day, where ever I may go, what ever I may be doing, I cannot turn it off. I have visions in my head, in my dreams at night, all the time...what I want to draw. Flights of fancy turn my imagination to a field of delight.
The simple sight of a wildflower at the side of the walkway brings to my mind dancing faeries, their music wafting into my mind like so many coral bells...and I long to put it on paper.
I see snowstorms in my head and I want to capture the sparkle of crystal icicles hanging from the branches of trees like Nature's necklaces.
I take a ride on a carousel, in some long-forgotten memory, and I imagine how I would decorate it ~ cover it in flowers? drape it in filigree? or maybe dress it with fine laces, posing the head thrown back, and ride off to...where?
And you see? That's just it!...wherever I want to go!
To me, that is what it means to be an artist. I can take a pencil and paper, and draw my own imagined world.
I have done many, many portraits, both for hire and for fun. I have been published, more than once, from newsletter publications, to yearbooks, to coloring books. My drawings are 'out there'...and I would not give back one moment of all the time it took me to achieve that!
I have dreams of being published again. I want to keep drawing portraits, both for hire and for fun. I want to give people the pleasure from my work that it gives me to produce it.
I do not do this because I seek any kind of glory for myself. I don't care if anyone pays me a compliment again for the rest of my life.
I do it because I love doing it.
I want my imagination to take others to places in their minds that mine has taken me. Whether it be a memory of their children's younger days, or a trip on a carousel to some far-away place. I want to show them that we are not bound to this everyday world if we don't want to be.
I have been a dreamer all my life. My own mother used to tell me I was always living in the clouds...and I have never come down!
And this, this dreaming, this wondering, this imagining, this beautiful creative place where God has sent me ~ I will want to stay here for the rest of my days.
And that, to me, is why I am an artist!

'Art is the unceasing effort to complete with the beauty of flowers ~ and never succeeding...' ~ Marc Chagall.
'I am following Nature without being able to grasp her...' ~ Claude Monet.