I was not particularly artsy growing up. I didn't doodle or draw, I can't remember a single art class, and I never had dreams of becoming an artist. Not once. I graduated from Howard University with a degree in exercise physiology and abruptly decided that I wanted to be a chef. I got a degree from the New england Culinary Institute and so began the next 15 years of life in the kitchen. It was a romantic vision when I started, cooking for friends, family and clients while listening to jazz. I can almost see the sparkling twinkles of joy as I think about it now. The reality wasn't so far off but included late nights, weekends, and holidays working long days. At some point, the grind of it all started to stress me out. I fell into a depression and didn't want to do any of it. If someone called me for a job I immediately said no, if they emailed me I guilted myself into taking it and resented it afterwards. The work hadn't changed, it wasn't more difficult or more hours, but I just couldn't do it anymore. I remember sitting halfway up the stairs absolutely sobbing to my husband about how DONE I was with cooking. I am not sure I ever cried like that before or since. I spent the next year not cooking. Because my life had been so busy and unpredictable I didn't have an hobbies, so I didn't have anything to occupy my time other than my family and a part-time job at Williams Sonoma. The spring after that decision to stop cooking, I started to think about Calligraphy. I had always wanted to try it but, of course, I never had the time. So I took an online course and started practicing for 10-20 minutes each day. That was the start of two amazing things. First, by doing Calligraphy for 20 minutes a day, over the course of a month there is a significant improvement. Second, I had carved out 20 minutes a day for creative time. Once I decided that I was not going to be a calligraphist, I realized that I could use that time for whatever I wanted. I held on to the motto I picked up from other calligraphers "practice not perfection" and I was off to the races. That summer was all about watercolor and in the fall I was into acrylics. {NB I did play with acrylics for about 2 weeks in Culinary school and again for a week 7 years later but I hadn't had any courses or long term practice} I had been on Instagram for about a year by that point, {Vegans and Calligraphist are still my favorite communities, they are soooo supportive!} and as I started posting the women in dresses in acrylic on my Instagram feed, I started getting requests to purchase them. I was also contacted by an old friend from Howard, who was also now an artist. She challenged me to go bigger with the Women. "Do an 18in x 24in," she said. "You're ready" To which I thought, I'm not afraid to go bigger, I just don't know why I should... I took the challenge anyway and painted one 18in x 24in and one 24in x 36in. Both sold within a couple of weeks. So I began to paint more of the Women as well as some Abstracts. Over the course of the next year, opportunities just presented themselves and I said yes to all of them. After that I began to strategize and plan out events are marketing, to make the work into a business. I think what I have learned since that first year is that the most important part of the equation is the time in the studio painting. If I find passion in the work, other people respond. If I play and experiment, I grow. If I listen to my heart and my gut, I find the truth of what the work is telling me. If I focus on the work, it is life giving, it feeds my soul and my heart, it refreshes me.
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November 2019
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