Creative Inspiration

“Mom, where do I put the “v” again?” I remember asking this question to my mom when I was four. The best education I ever got was in art and it was from my mom. She would sketch and try to teach me how to draw. She showed me how to draw many different things, but I only really remember the trees – they were so amazing and complex to me. I would ask my mom again and again “Mom, where do I put the v again?” For those of you who don’t know what I mean by “v”, it’s the part of the tree that makes a branch – v’s are signs the tree is growing and at each “v” an artist has an opportunity to give it more character. My mom did oil paintings of landscapes, sketches of motorcycles and buildings and more and I wanted to be just like her. She was not an art teacher and she never took art classes other than high school—during that time she was a full time student learning to become a radio technician trying to make ends meet in a man’s world raising two girls on her own. Where did all this creativity come from? I had no idea at the time, but it would prove to be an invaluable skill.

Imagine now that it’s 1980 and you are in a trailer house in a very, very small town in the middle of nowhere. It’s Sunday, and your parents let you skip Sunday school, but you’d never miss Sunday dinner at Grandma’s. When you walk in to Grandma’s house, you are welcomed by familiar faces and smells of dinner cooking in the oven…mixed with cigarette smoke and banters from grandma in the kitchen-- telling the kids over and over, “get out of the kitchen while I’m cooking!”. And all the kids have to leave the kitchen except you. You get to stay because you are coloring quietly, her perfect angel. (you might even secretly be her favorite)

This is a scenario that played out often at my grandma’s because we had dinner there every Sunday. Melva always had cigarettes and black coffee for the adults; crayons and paper for the kids; but I seemed to be the only kid taking advantage of the paper and crayons. I remember one day my Uncle came into the kitchen and sat down next to me; he grabbed a crayon and started coloring. I was stunned--starring through my big coke bottle glasses. My Uncle, a rough-around-the-edge- tough-manly-man with a full head of semi curly hair, 6’5” or more who worked (and still does) for the railroad broke his normal routine of eating, watching TV, and passing out on the recliner to color with me. With crayons. Inside, I was imploding from excitement and eager to see what he would do…would he color in the lines? Would he finish it or just get bored and quit? What colors would he use? I watched intensely as his crayon smoothly wrapped around the inside of the lines, elegantly encompassing every shape before he filled them in, one by one. Holy crap. He finished it. And it was good. Here I thought my mom was the only artist in the family.

As I got older, I continued to draw and began doing still life’s of things around the house. I drew my radio, my bed, and plenty of other things. When I was done, I would sign the sketches and tack them on the wall in my bedroom-a room I shared with my older sister. And as life happens, my sister and I had an argument that turned into a full fledge battle. I strategically left her home to babysit our younger siblings (when it was actually her turn to go play) and came home to find she had taken a red marker and put a line through all my sketches; every last one. I was devastated. I knew there was no way to get that red out of my drawings; so I just threw them all away. I was so defeated I didn’t even plot anything to get her back. I cried to try to get my mom to do something—and then I moped about the house for a few days, weeks, or months – I don’t even remember.

The truth is, I’m not sure I liked those drawings anyway, but I do know I liked the attention I got from creating them. Through years of exploiting this forced skill to one up my sister, I now know I am not totally naturally gifted, only fined tuned my drawing with bullheaded skills and will power. I cannot just whip out a sketch that I would be proud of…however, I have learned that doodling, drawing, painting and coloring is somehow meditation for me. It relaxes me and my bullheadness. Maybe that’s what mom had in mind all along.
It’s taken me years to understand you cannot run full speed into life’s roadblocks. Some roadblocks are self induced and others are put there like some sort of test. There is one big roadblock many people face which is being born without wealth. I would have been much more depressed as a kid if my mom had not shown us five girls how to have fun without money. Her positive attitude kept our spirits healthy—which is the best gift you can give a kid. My sisters and I had some of our best memories are dressing up in the ugliest clothes and running around laughing. The higher the highwaters the better! We even put nylons over our heads and ran around like robbers—the neighbors thought we were nuts. Sure it would have been nice to have been able to just go out and buy new clothes, but then we would have missed out on tons of laughs – and trust me the pictures are the gifts that keep on giving.

My mother inspired a passion in us all to think creatively and enjoy life without having money. Being creative has fueled my love for change; I love seeing transformation in everything around me, especially people. I do have a portfolio of what I refer to as “forced-skill drawings” and when I look at them, I don’t think “Wow, I should do more of these"…instead, I’m always thinking about what I was doing when I created them. Where was I living, what were my goals?

For example, when I painted two birds, I was in an intro to drawing class in Ventura, California. I was about 20 years old and this was an exam. I remember walking in that morning to take the exam-it was a beautiful day and early. I was feeling good and eager to start my test and when I looked across the room and saw these two stuffed birds in the middle of the room. My instructor walked up smiling and explained we were supposed to sketch only one of them. The test was to draw with a bamboo stick and a bottle of ink. You were to dip the stick into the ink and sketch---no erasing. This was something we had not done before and I was definitely nervous (we weren’t allowed to erase and this was an exam)! In hindsight, the exam was like real life because you don’t get to undo your mistakes. If you make a mistake, you have to work it into the full composition.

Life for each of us starts off as a blank canvas and it evolves in one big transformation. The best part is that you can’t really see it while it’s happening; You can only catch glimpses of progress when you stop to take a look back...like stopping half way through a drawing to see if it looks like what you intended it to. In the end it’s always a big surprise because it never turns out the way you planned. If life was a bed of roses or a bowl of cherries, none of us would have any creativity and our canvases would be blank. Being classified as an artist doesn’t necessarily mean you create masterpieces of artwork. For some of us, it’s simply means finding colorful ways to incorporate the next big challenge into an existing composition called “your life”.