Coming into Wild Roses

"Did you used to draw, Mommy?"

Why yes, I did. Before my career as a designer. Before someone paid me to do art and my love for it completely died.

So of course they ask, "Can we see? Do you still have your drawings?" It's not the paid stuff they want to see. They want to dig back, discover what I used to do, when no one was looking, when no one asked me to whip up a logo, cut and paste a brochure.

I go to the attic, dust off a brown leather zip case.

Here it is, a gathering of drawings and paintings from childhood and young adulthood. "You were really good!" they encourage me. Why, it's true; I wasn't half bad. I can't draw like that anymore though. And I have no desire to do so. Those were detailed drawings, painstaking, realistic.

That is past. Now I draw with my whole arm. I seem to be drawing in circles. I am pulled towards the abstract... something I never attempted before. It's as if I am coming into my own. I don't want to be an artist, like I said before. I'm just moving in circles, finding healing in colors, form, a kind of fluid dance. It is, in its way, a journey that takes courage. No promise of pay, no adherence to my previous ideas about art, just a knowing that this is the way I will pray and walk... as if into fields of wild, wild roses.

Wild Roses in soft pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

This post is to welcome InCourage, a gathering place for encouragement. Do you have a story to tell in celebration? Stop by and add your link.

OTHER LL POSTS TO WELCOME InCourage:
Baby, You Made My Decade, at Green Inventions
Nothing in Return, at Seedlings in Stone