For you ... whoever you are

This is a painting I did last year for my first full art exhibit. It's not my usual style because I have a tremendous capacity for melancholy, heartbreak, and "woe-is-me" in my art. Many of the stories and artwork I've created for Once Upon A City are tinged with sadness and this bluesy overtone spills over into the other creative things I do. The songs I write. The "bigger" stories I'm working on. The things I paint.

This painting, however, seems to overflow with such tremendous and wide open joy for life and love and hope and goodness that it just makes me smile. The ways in which I can spiral in my darkness can be blinding a so I like to remind myself that I am equally capable of giddiness and silliness and a child-like lust for glorious living. And that's what this painting does for me.

It's certainly not brilliant but I don't really care. I don't create because I need praise and accolades (not that there's anything WRONG with those things, of course). I create because I love to create. I am a storyteller above all else. And this painting tells the story of boy reaching out with all his might because he believes in the possibility of greatness and he believes that joy and love is his to embrace and share. And sometimes that's the only reminder a person needs to get up and go back out there.

Creativity isn't always about creating something to share with the world. Sometimes it's about creating your own reminders that it's going to be okay. I write stories about finding answers when I don't even understand the questions. I write love songs for lovers I haven't yet met. And I paint flowers "for you", whoever you might be. Because I can. Because I need to. 

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