10 Things I Love About Being An Artist, #8

Living Life Deeply

Last night I turned all the lights out to go to bed and I was stopped in my tracks. I gazed around me in wonder, in awe, because all the windows were aglow with what I call “snow light.” Illuminated and bright, like multiple TV screens shimmering in the dark (except much more beautiful than that), it took my breath away and I exclaimed out loud to no one but the animals, “Ahhhhhhhh.”

We’ve had quite a lot of snow lately so the ground is blanketed, and the moon was pretty full. So the snow outside was, quite literally, glowing, iridescent. It was stunningly beautiful in a fragile kind of way. It looked like magic made visible, silent and deep and profound—delicate and powerful at the same time.

I had to go outside to be in it, so I put on mittens, hat, muffler and boots and headed out with Kelee. It was a clear night and I spun around under a blanket of stars. Everything else fell away except for the beauty of that moment, and in that moment, I was so grateful to be an artist. Because ever since I started painting again, I see everything more clearly; I experience life more deeply. I have become extra-sensitized because I have opened to my art and my art has opened me.

When I paint, I feel a connection that is palpable. Somehow the very nerve endings of my being are engaged. And this lasts well beyond my time at the easel.

My art invites me to move through the world, seeing and feeling from a heart that has been opened. I have referred to this before as living skinless. I feel deep empathy (with eight animals you might have already guessed). I am brought to tears easily. I am overwhelmed often. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. And yet I am deeply indebted to this very sensitivity because it allows me to live fully alive, to exist every day to the very fiber of my being.

Like the house lit at night by the snow, making art illuminates my life. And because of it I am made both delicate and powerful at the same time.

Love to you all,
Jeane