NEW STROKES

A new chapter is always exciting when reading a book.....and so in life a new chapter can be just as exciting or even better.  I have always wanted to be a teacher.  As a child I would play teacher in the basement and have a whole class set up with a big blackboard that I had asked for as a Christmas present one year.  It was my best time!  It was my little girl cave.  But I coupled that love with art.  I vividly remember in one of my elementary classes there was a certain pen that one of my teachers used, and I searched unceasingly in the stores for the same one so I could mark up my play papers in my made up classroom.  I could never find that pen, but I loved the certain way it put the ink down and marked the paper.  It was a constant search for me.  The same went with the art that I loved as a child and as I grew up.  I loved and still love the way certain brushes create their mark on the paper or canvas.....it's what drew me and continues to draw me to it......the quick strokes that remained untouched after being carefully or randomly applied.  So, I felt teaching and art went so well together for me and it always will, but I needed to move on from teaching for a while.  I need to branch out and find a new way to stroke the paper without needing to always find projects to teach that could keep me from experimenting and doing things without having an order in which to teach it.  I found that when I had to document and write down every aspect of how to do a painting in order to teach it, it became too stuck in the same mode.  I will still love to go back to teaching, but with a freedom that doesn't require me to remember what color I used here or there, because really, painting isn't and shouldn't be that ordered....at least for me.  I like to mush color around on my palette to make a new color I would never have thought of using, and not knowing what I might come up with is part of the fun.  I loved teaching, but the fun wasn't there anymore.  The best part is the relationships I've had over the years with my students.  Seeing the joy in creating something they didn't think they could do was better than any stroke of my brush!  Seeing a valueless painting turn into one with depth and atmospheric perspective is exciting!  Some never knew what values were.....but when they were shown, it was like a light bulb going on and it couldn't be turned off!  It's great, and I so enjoyed opening new doors for people and their painting abilities!  I hope they take that and run with it, just like I want to run through the new door God will be opening for me.  Who knows, but I believe we shouldn't remain stagnant....always learning, always growing, always serving.....it's good for you. 

Here's to new strokes!