My Return to Myself as Artist

I haven't drawn pictures in so long that I almost forgot the enormous thrill of pressing a stick of charcoal or a colored pencil against a blank creme colored page of a sketch book. I almost forgot the almost out-of-body experience of getting lost in a picture - ignoring everything going on around me in order to capture the essence of that which I was reproducing on the page. I could stay there for hours as a little girl and then a teenager.

About a month after my mom's friend Jo died, I went to the Michael's Craft Store not far from my house and bought a 9 inch x 12 inch sketch book with those same familiar creme pages and a package of charcoal pencils. I already had a pack of colored pencils and a tin of pastels waiting at home. I waited a couple days before I started a picture. I wanted to remember the artist I used to be - the one that took art classes as a child, the one that pinned pictures to every available white space of wall in her bedroom as a teen, the one that painted pictures with acrylics and watercolors, the one who designed papier-mache' sculptures, and the one that loved the feel of cool clay in her hands as she shaped balls of clay into animals, people, vases, bowls.

I remembered her, and I knew that I had to embrace her again. I believed that I had received something from Jo as the last person to touch her face before she departed for heaven. I believed that I had received a mandate to return to myself, to return to the artist hiding deep within and covered up with so many other concerns - concerns that truly did not belong to me.

So I began to draw. The first picture I drew was of a woman's face. I felt like I was just practicing, to see if I still had the gift. I did. The next one is the picture that accompanies this post.

This picture was drawn as I watched my god-daughter Terryl-Lynn crawling around on her grandmother's bedroom floor. The picture was supposed to capture her as an 11-month-old, but the end result was of how I believed she would look within a year. And I realized that I was able to see as I used to; I was able to tap into that creativity and produce a work of art again.

This is one of my favorite pictures for now, but I know that this will not be the only one. The artist within is surfacing again. Jo would be so proud.