Tireless Fruit begs to be known

I’ve made art on and off throughout my life. Mostly I never took it seriously enough.  Even when I was in school I never expected it to go anywhere.  There were times I didn’t  make art for years.  But I always came back to it.

Then I met Jon and in him I found a person who was very serious about creativity.  He never questioned it’s worth, he just believed in it.  Really, it was like religion to him.  For someone to squander his or her creativity was a sin.  He was always looking for artists to encourage, which is why he gave me the barn at Old Bedlam Farm to work in.  And why he published Mary Kellogg’s poems and why he writes and takes pictures everyday.

Maybe I caught Jon’s passion for creativity, or maybe I was just ready to hear it.  Ready to live the creative life that burned inside of me since I can remember.  I would dip my toe in the creative waters, but fear kept me from really committing.  I was afraid of failing, of not being good enough.    I had a million excuses from believing I had to do something that was of more value to society to thinking if I couldn’t be original in my art that it wasn’t worth doing.

But when Jon offered me the barn to make into my studio, I felt it was the first time someone was really seeing me. That he knew me in a way that I didn’t even know myself.  It was the first space that I ever had that was truly mine. And every night when I worked on it, cleaning it out, painting the walls and floor, washing the windows, I cried.  Sometimes silent tears and sometimes loud sobs.  I baptized that space with my tears.  But it was a baptism for me too.  I was about to be immersed in a creative life.  In a life where the longing in me was finally fulfilled.  The longing that was the acknowledgement of my true self.  Me the artist.  And there came a point when I knew that I would always make my art.  No matter what, it would be a priority in my life.  And I would always find a way to do it. Because, as Jon saw, it’s who I am.

Tireless Fruit is the creativity that I tried to squelch again and again.  It’s that part of me I tried to deny.  But it wouldn’t stay down, it  kept coming back.  It wanted to be known, needed to be known, for me to know myself.

My wall hanging Tireless Fruit begs to be known is Sold for sale.  It measures about 25×26 and is $100 + $7 shipping. If this rings true for you and you’d like to own it, just email me here at [email protected].  I take checks and paypal.