I'm sitting right now listening to my favorite classical music – Maurice Andre' – I don't even know what it is entitled (as I lost the CD long ago and it is in my computer only by the composer), but I have listened to it as a child, when I wished to be thoughtful, as a college student when I was desperately trying to stuff my brain with whatever was needed for the test. I listened when my children were babies. During my seasons of soul death, it has comforted me, like a soft blanket. Whenever I wish to be creative, I play this music, as I am right now.
However, as beautiful as the compositions are, none-the-less, the painting I am working on is struggling. Seeking help, I am taking a break and reading "An Artist's Way of Seeing" by Mary Whyte. She says:
"The colors of our life are always with us. We are made of them, and they are made of us. The night my mother died, a full moon filled the sky with a gentle violet, the color of an orchid in its deepest, hidden part. I stood at the window with the realization that my mother was gone, but that I would always have that color of the sky. Now, on similar evenings, when the moon and the clouds are just so, and the moonlight touches the marsh and turns it to silver, I feel my mother tip-toeing past me."
Isn't that beautiful? She writes in a way that lets us see, lets us feel what she is experiencing.
Part of the reason this blog exists, is to nurture the artistic/creative side in me, and hopefully in you as well. So much of my adult existence has been about productivity; or better stated, efficiency. Yet neither mystery, nor the magical resides here.
However, enchantment abounds in moonlight and gentle violet colors of the sky.
What must we do in order to give ourselves permission to see the world not as a commodity or as a 'to do' list, but rather, to see the Beauty and Life all around us and, furthermore, or more importantly, IN US? Perhaps it is enough just to bring it up . . . and let the notion have its way with us.