Friday, December 19, 2008

One women's journey through art


I grew up not believing in God, yet I was always searching for some kind of spiritual connection. The variety of designs, beauty and differences in nature did not fit so neatly into the evolutionary theory, though I was a firm believer in that at the time. Even right now as I try to contemplate the amount of species of earth from living corals, to insects, to fish, to mammals to man as an artist the share numbers of differences are mind boggling.
Though I did not believe in God and was taught to look at the world with a logical rational mind, there were incidents that happened which did not fit into that box. Like when I was 16 and felt I was going to die one night and the next morning I awoke in amazement to find myself alive, only to find out a few hours later that my father died in his sleep that night at the young age of 43. Or the time my husband was visiting his family in Venice, Italy and I had this sensation that he was in trouble. I phoned him and he told me that he was having a horrible fight with his father and that one of them had picked up a knife and he desperately needed to speak to me. At the time of that sensation I was 3000 miles away from him.
So I began my journey to find some spiritual connection with the world that would help me to understand and make sense of these feelings that did not fit into a rational world. I noticed that I often felt like a telephone wire that would pick up on many different signals as they passed through my body. Having such a connectedness with humans made be keenly aware of much of the suffering that went on in the world, so I would escape into my paintings. When I paint I go into a sixth dimension in which I can shut off the world around me and hide in a wonderful world of beauty,color and order. Doing my art was the only way to stop all the chatter that I picked up from the outside world it was away of soothing myself and it was a place I could understand and make orderly. Looking back I realize how lucky I was to have this outlet and it has pushed me to be an advocate for making sure children are educated in the arts. I believe if more people tapped into their creative side there would be much less aggression in the world. Our societies have been focusing on the wrong values and look where that has gotten us. If you are a creator it becomes much harder to be a destroyer.

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