Things Art Taught Me

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Lately I have really been enjoying my digital art adventures. It's so much fun messing around on the computer and I have noticed a recurring pattern in the process of these creations.

Since I usually work fairly intuitively in this medium I don't often have a set plan. I open a few files, cut and paste a bit and generally play around with whatever colours and images take my fancy. Often I will have a broad theme but nothing is ever etched in stone.

What often happens is that I hit a wall. I reach a point where the whole thing seems yuck and seems to be going nowhere. And I start to get frustrated. But this is the best bit, and the part of the process that I am growing to love. Because once I move through that block, then the piece usually comes together, often by going off into surprising new directions. I love that wall! Now I get really excited when it all seems messy and 'wrong' because I know that I am about to have a breakthrough, a little leap forward.

Which leads me to imagine what it would be like to apply that to every single challenging life situation I may encounter. What would happen if every time I encounter an obstacle, or frustration, instead of fear or worry I get really excited because I know that I am about to have a leap in growth? Every frustration would be merely opportunity in disguise and life would be pretty exciting.

It's such a blessing to walk a creative path, because when I pay close attention I notice that the path is strewn with many gifts, even if at first glance I mistook them for rocks.

Gratitude mandala

Today I noticed that yesterday's 'Top Ten' list could also be read as a gratitude list. Life gives us so many blessings when we start to add them up. I could have added so much more to that list that it really makes me appreciate how wonderful life is. No wonder I woke up this morning with a burning desire to create a gratitude piece, and the words thank you repeating again and again in my mind.

When the call is this loud, it is hard to ignore, and I have learnt to just go with it when I feel a kind of compulsion to create, or express something. I usually find it difficult to concentrate on anything else until I get it out of my system anyway. Hence, this blog project and the ongoing mandala series which started over a year ago with the urge to keep making mandalas until I had made sixty-four of them! This soon expanded to me wanting to make a hundred and eight, and I am by no means near that goal, but the fact that I take steps towards this goal regularly helps free me up so I can actually do other things in life. And, for now, it's not just mandalas, but gratitude mandalas. I can only hope that they are to be included in the hundred and eight, and not the start of another separate series!

I wanted to do this digitally for a couple of reasons. The first, not so noble one, is that I seriously convinced myself that it would be really, really quick and easy. Ha! And the second was that I wanted to use previous mandalas and combine elements from them to form one piece because I felt it reflected the spirit of gratitude which, to me, is all about making the best of what you have, stopping to notice how blessed you are once in a while, and then sharing that.

Well, it was not so 'quick and easy' and I suspect that my kinked neck may well decide to stay this way henceforth. Perhaps if I had taken the time to learn how to use my software properly before now (I have had it for nearly eight years!) it might have been easier.

But I did learn a lot in a relatively short space of time, and I am grateful for that, no seriously, and it did capture the essence of what I was trying to express. Perhaps a little inelegantly, but the sentiment remains nonetheless. And now comes the fun part of mandala making, which is letting it go and putting it out there.

It is with much thanks to everyone who has supported and encouraged my creativity - you know who you are- that I offer this piece. Thank you.