Creating

Greetings and salutations!

Thanks to my friend, Spencer, for adding me as an author and letting me share my art on this site.  First off, I’ve never considered myself an artist because, I can’t draw.  Well, not the way I believed artists should draw.  I thought artists take classes, sketch models standing in the center of the room, and sat in coffee shops staring forlornly at people and making dramatic, charcoal sketches a la Jack Dawson drawing a nude Kate Winslet.

However, the past three and a half years have been quite the rollercoaster.  You see, I’m a recovering law school student.  I took the CA Bar last July.  I did not pass.  I was a wreck for a few weeks.  Although I did not die, it certainly felt like something had broken.  Spirit, self-esteem, whatever and whathaveyou–something was amiss.

So I did what any good Stella (praise be La Angela Basset) looking to get her groove back would do: I spent nine days in Mexico City, seeing the sights, and listening obsessively to Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo on audiobook.  I also started watching interviews of her on YouTube.

Law school may not have been the best experience of my life but it took the above average stalking skills I had naturally and honed them to a razor sharp tip.

Oh yes, fear me.

Anyway, there was a series of interviews and one very heart-breaking short story called Have You Seen Marie? in which La Sandra (blessed be Her name) said, “It is essential to create when the spirit is dying.  It doesn’t matter what.”

And at that point, I believe it was you that started crying ugly, scrunch-faced, snot-soaked tears–because it certainly wasn’t moi.  

Okay.  Maybe I shed a tear or two.  But after those two lonely, stoic drips of stardust ran dignified down my cheeks, I thought to myself, “Perhaps my spirit is dying.  Perhaps I should create?”

But create what, exactly?

As stated before, I never thought of myself of an artist and the very thought of filling a blank sheet of paper with images that I created out of my own head was terrifying.  Surely, there would be nothing within me that would fill a whole sheet of paper.  So I put off the idea of creating for my dying spirit.  Until I took a trip to Frida Kahlo’s house.

You all don’t need me to tell you about Frida Kahlo because the innanetz could definitely do a better job but what I learned was that her paintings were often not very big.  Sometimes they were portrait sized and other times they were about the size of a postcard.

And damn it, I may not be able to fill a space the size of a standard 8 x 11 inch paper but I could certainly do something with a postcard.

Thus, my little projects began.

Below, you’ll see some of the work I’ve made since the start of the new year, using art supplies I got from Target.  Most of these are done on card stock from a box of Meow Mix.  The paints are acrylic by Hand Made Modern.  Because art on a budget is kind of my aesthetic.

When I got brave enough to venture away from my postcard paintings, I drew this illustration of the Mayan goddess Ixchel.  She comes in three forms: maiden, mother, and crone.  She is known as the goddess of the moon, fertility, and textiles.  Perhaps this is not her most conventionally attractive form but I think it’s beautiful.  With age comes wisdom, the knowledge of the ages, and (hopefully) the ability to know when to say “No” to the things that aren’t right for you.

Definitely need that in my life right now.  I’m thinking of making a series of goddess illustrations, just because.

I also have a few postcard paintings that I put on instagram but deleted from my phone.  I actually mailed these postcards to friends, so I no longer have them to scan but you can still see them here:

And that’s that.  I hope to post more of my artwork on here and I hope that you all like them.  More importantly, I hope that if there is anyone out there who wants to create but feels like they can’t–I want them to know that they most certainly can.  All I’m doing is putting down random thoughts that come in my head, I don’t have any real rhyme or reason to it.

I hope we all have decent 2018s and that ours is a year of creativity, bravery, exploration, and just living.

Here’s to living our best lives.

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