To each her own

The cold and gloom that is January is keep­ing me home more than usu­al these days, so I’m back in my art room playnt­ing my way toward spring.

One of the many perks of mak­ing art is that it allows you to tran­scend real­i­ty and cre­ate what you want to see in the world. Or at least try to. Realism is not, and nev­er will be, my forte. I like to paint from imag­i­na­tion and fol­low my instincts, for bet­ter or worse. Painting, in my mind, is about just that: putting paint to paper. The end result isn’t the point, and I have stacks of pieces to prove it. When the focus is on process, every art-mak­ing ses­sion is time well spent.

I would love to have high­ly devel­oped draw­ing and paint­ing skills, but I don’t. That would require a lev­el of ambi­tion and ded­i­ca­tion that — like the skills them­selves — I don’t pos­sess and am not inclined to pur­sue. I’m retired, after all, and that kind of dis­ci­pline sounds like a lot of work to me.

This win­ter I’m kick­ing back, doing tons of read­ing, a lit­tle paint­ing, and vir­tu­al­ly no writ­ing (until now), except for emails and texts. I’m not sure why, but I have a the­o­ry: I’m tired of striv­ing to write well. Writing is hard work for me, so I’m fol­low­ing my heart, just let­ting myself be, resting.

Doing what I want to do — instead of what I think I should do — feels right, right now. A prim­i­tive lit­tle sketch of fan­ci­ful bird­hous­es is about all I can muster. But you know what? It’s enough. Making this sim­ple piece of art cheered me and sat­is­fied my urge to cre­ate some­thing. It also got me think­ing (anoth­er activ­i­ty that I do occa­sion­al­ly, but not so much that it feels like work). And now I’m won­der­ing: Which is the bet­ter leader, the heart or the head? . . . Is let­ting one­self coast a cop-out?  . . . Where, exact­ly, is the line between self-indul­gence and self-care? Does such a line even exist? 

All of this curios­i­ty is wear­ing me out, so I think I’ll read awhile, then go into my art room and turn on some music. It’s too cold and dark to go any­where, and who knows, if I fol­low my instincts and find my favorite black pen, maybe I can draw some conclusions.