Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
                                                                                           ~ George Bernard Shaw

Creative Play #1


Okay, so it's kind of a cheesy title for this post and not terribly original. There's a song, there's a movie, and who knows what else. But somehow it also felt appropriate for this post. Yesterday was my birthday, and it happens to be the year before the big mid-century mark. I had expected next year's birthday to be a bit of a cage-rattler, but turns out I got a preview this year. Woke up with a headache and it went downhill from there*. You know: the whole questioning what I've done with my life thus far thing.

I've been continuing to ruminate over what I talked about in my last post, and all of your comments have given me lots more food for thought. (Thank you so much!) Last week I also had an idea floating around in my head about wanting to have more creativity in my life. Not the serious "must paint something worthy" type of creativity, but more the kind I seemed to have an endless supply of when I was 13 or 14, before it became buried under the chaos of growing up. Remember creative play? Creating for the sheer joy of it? (artist Belinda Del Pasco just happened to talk about creative play in a very timely, beautifully articulated post last week on her blog here) Seems that we have to give ourselves permission to play as adults. So I'm giving myself permission. Every day. And I will be posting the results on the blog, perhaps not every single day, but certainly more often than I've been posting lately.

Detail

So this first play session, completed today, was simply a matter of asking "What if?". What if I put watercolor on Bristol paper instead of watercolor paper? What if I add some india ink? What if I scribble the paper with some clear wax first? What if I blow on the ink and watercolor before it dries? Some may say that it's a waste of time to play and this piece will never be fine art, but through playing and exploring I found effects I really like that I could recreate in a "serious" piece later. Plus, and much more importantly, I had fun and the world could sure use more fun.

Another detail

Hopefully after a year of play, when the big Five-O rolls around, I'll wake up that morning thinking 49 was the best year yet, and eager for more.

*I should note that my birthday was not a complete let-down. My husband took me out for dinner to one of my favorite restaurants and we tried their chocolate layer cake for the first time and oh wow! Gooey, chocolaty and huge; this thing should be illegal! I felt much better after that.

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