Playing with Color

So, I do not fancy myself an artist. In my mind an artist is professionally trained, has carefully honed their craft, and spends all of their days trying to make it better than when they started. Artists have art studios and are always trying to balance their craft and the real world. It was when I moved to Olympia, WA, when the idea that I could be an artist was planted. I had a session with Michelyn Gjurasic in 2013-2014 which introduced the idea of me being an artist. In this moment, I wish I could find our session but cannot. At the time, I had a career path as a historian and an archivist that I felt passionate about. Part of me rejected the idea that I had art within me. Over time, I started to embrace the part of me that wants to play with paint, color, and drawing. How do I embrace the artist in me? Do you believe you have an artist in you? Now, I feel like creativity is a huge part of who I am. Books like Big Magic by Liz Gilbert and working with a former yoga teacher and artist - Diane Sherman helped me find my inner child and become less particular about art - what I create. I feel less particular and more free to just release my inner child to just color, draw, paint, and create. But I also write, which is my favorite choice of art. Unfortunately this is something I WANT to be good at. Am I any good at it? I think I have moments of writing that just comes and flows and other times where it feels forced. Often it is because I am thinking too much about what I am writing instead of just letting things flow. I say that I write, but I also believe that I need an editor. I love it when I am in the flow of the words and not in my head about what comes next. I have to get out of my own way. I have been exposed to so many different ways of releasing the inner critic - through Pat Schneider's Writing Alone and with Others and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. I'm playing with morning pages a la Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way and I continue to have a relationship with the daily journal in fits and starts. I'm so excited that I have been able to cultivate relationships with other writer's through the practice of writing. Natalie Goldberg says it is the most important part of writing or being a writer. In fact, nearly every author will say that a writer writes. I have done more writing since 2018 than I have done in the rest of my life (except for school or work). I have seen it evolve and change. I am learning to be less attached to what I write. Just step out of writing's way and let things flow. Okay, I am off to practice writing. What ways are you embracing your inner creativity. We ALL have it.