Once an Artist, Always an Artist

"Two of Them" 1977

"An Ocean of Possibility" 2009

The portfolio of my art that I created as a three year old child is perhaps the best birthday present I have ever received! My mom held onto my early creations over all these years and finally put the collection together after my recent visit to see her in Detroit. While there, I shared with her that from time to time I kick myself for throwing out all of my old drawings and paintings from the art classes I took in high school and college. The purge occurred when I was going through my divorce and was paring down during my move to a new home. Looking back it was a time in which I did not honor my creative self and, as a result, put my expressions on the curb to be picked up with the trash, not thinking of the regret I would feel years later.

A friend recently shared with me that perhaps I wasn’t meant to hold onto my old artwork. That maybe to have held onto it would have been like holding onto the past and that I need to live in the now and look to the future. While I agree with him on an intellectual level, from time-to-time my heart still yearns to reconnect with my younger, more innocent self in an effort to see my growth and measure how far I have come, both as an artist and as a person.

So when I opened the portfolio of my childhood art and saw shapes and symbols in the form of circles, lines and dots that still haunt my consciousness and my paintings today, thirty plus years later, I felt a completeness in my soul I have never known and I wept. The tears flowed as I was reminded of who I am: a creative being and one with my Creator. And now I understand why I paint what I paint: energy and my vision of our oneness – because it is who I am. One.

Once an artist, always an artist. Once an expression of love, always an expression love.

Deeply we are one.