As many a preteen, I used to entertain myself for hours, drawing, designing fashions (in retrospect, hideous fashions) for improbably shaped girls with triangular heads. Don’t ask. I was interested in the doing more than the result, which is actually, for me, the best way to create. It is the in the best interests of the world that none of my designs have survived.

About twelve years ago, I picked up drawing again, compelled by the doing once more. I’d purchased some pastels and, on impulse, decided to copy a photograph of my youngest boy running a race. This drawing I still have. Although it does favor him, one forearm is inexplicably longer than the other, distracting from any likeness I might have achieved. However, what I remember most is that I was so deep in the creative process that at one point, I looked up with a deep blue pastel in my hand to realize three hours had passed and I was in the wee small hours of the night. All that time I had been suspended in an intense active but meditative state.

Which is what I seek today. Even when I’m struggling with how to best position a figure in front of a busy background, I’m on a high, a humming high, that feeds my soul and my problem-solving intellect. Any time we are creating, I think we feed our souls.

Today, as I was making a sort of mindless geometric abstract, I focused on design, clarity of line, balance of color, shading, a clean over-all presentation, regardless of the result. I was trying things, taking chances, just seeing where it all took me. But I think, I ruminate, I learn from what I’m doing. I mentally was building my next project, wildly disparate from this, which I cannot wait to start. The idea actually came to me in a formal meditation class which I accept as a sign. Of something. Later, I’ll have to let you know of what.

Sisyphus: This was something I made for my son under the guise of “just sending you some art, honey,” when really I was butting in on his problems. *sigh* The mother-gene is always alive and well and annoying.