Making a fresh start and feeling like it's familiar territory-

Every couple of months I make a fresh start.  I like to call it rebooting.  My to do lists, use of time, habits good and bad get re-evaluated.  Forget New Year's Resolutions- I do this several times a year!  I "decide" to clean more often, to draw more often, to do more for others.  My priorities straighten up as I think about how brief life is and what I would be doing if I knew I only had another three years to do it in.
 
Over and over throughout the year I ask myself why I want to pursue art as a career and the answer is always the same: I don't actually WANT to pursue art as a career.  I just can't NOT. So, I say, if there is something you always end up doing no matter whatever else you try to focus on it must be a calling. 

I can't think of any time in my life that I wasn't making something and discovering meaning in it.  When I was asked, years ago, to make name tags for a women's retreat, all I could think of was how different we all are, yet as a group we complete one another... yellow, blue, red shapes to form hearts and hands...

I need to come up with a Reformation Day costume and all I could think of was how the world was changed through writing... an ink bottle... with a quill for a hat.

As a child, my drawings were heavy with meanings I couldn't articulate.  It's a bee in the bonnet, a jones, a calling.  A picture or form reaches into the heart where words lose meaning.  I have to make art because there is so much to say that there that I have no words for.
 
Reboot complete.