“Underwater Dive”

I haven’t been writing my blog, lately. Occasionally, I visit in my mind. I’ve been writing my column, though, and keeping up well with that, every other week. Every other week, I interview an artist in my local community and write about my perspective regarding that experience. I have attended a Reading Railroad, visited with teachers at the local high school, photographed musicians at Elegante Jazz Club and co-created a wooden bowl with the local wood turners’ group. It is all a pleasure for me, so I continue to go in the direction of writing.

There are many things I like and I am following the Joseph Campbell quote of going forward in my bliss and trusting that doors will open where there were only walls before. That is what I am seeing. Sometimes slowly but surely, but I am taking the next few months to see what happens when my work is surrounded by things I truly want to do. I’ve been asking myself what I want. I think we all should. Maybe I should try this first and get back with you. Smiling ~

So, it’s an experiment but I do have a trust in it. I am starting a career at midlife after a long marriage and divorce, after offering myself to raising three beautiful children and homeschooling them along the way. Life is a little different now but, in the same way, I am still offering myself in the direction my heart is taking me. Two of the children I stayed home with all those years are nearly grown. My youngest, Clive, is six. He is watching a Harry Potter movie, in bed with me, as I write this. We are, also, starting the fourth chapter of the second novel .. and it’s exciting!!

There is still a part of me that would like to be with my kids at all times. But they are in public school now and I like that, too. It was time. Honestly, it was past time. I try to arrange my work around their schedules and for that reason and for the reason of having it in my heart to help people find home is why I earned my real estate license beginning about a year ago. It was then I went back to school. In all that has happened in my life, in the last year, there has been much balance created. I believe in balance, for a life unbalanced may be of great height for a while but ultimately cannot be sustained.

In following my bliss, there are opportunities coming to me and I am watching very closely. My paintings, it feels, are selling one after another. I am exceedingly grateful for the opportunities this gives to me to purchase more supplies and meet the financial needs of my family. Thank you to those who are supporting my art, I couldn’t possibly thank you enough.

The painting I am posting with this blog will be in a local magazine published through the newspaper. It will be in Charm Magazine in the next issue. I was asked by my friend, Denise Hoepfner, to write what this painting means to me. Generally, I do not write about my paintings. I often rather for people to see and interpret as they wish, and such a variety of that there is! It is not that I am not seeing. I see, too. It is that the range of what others are seeing is so vast. It is such a pleasure for me to know.

For this painting, I wrote:  Paintings are made up of layers. Layers and layers and layers. If you look closely at this one, you can see a black and white checkerboard pattern beneath the final layers, around the edges. This painting is about courage, the courage to go through the challenges life has to offer. All of us have them. They are not unique to one of us. “Underwater Dive” represents the times we go through the water, splash right through it, and then come out the other side.

And I would like to give title credit to Sherri Beddoe Bryant.

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Thank you for following my blog, being interested in my observations of life and making a difference in my life by being here. I value each and every one of you.

Blessings,

c.s.