Art

"As a child, I suffered a great handicap. Both my sisters were very artistic and I couldn't make a stick man look good. As I got older I gave up any form of artistic expression. My eldest sister could draw and write and her embrodery work was exquisite. My younger sister excelled in drawing, painting, paper mache, any kind of art. I couldn't compete, so I did nothing and it became a habit to stay clear of artisitic self expression. To this day, while my soul craves to express itself and I buy art supplies I never use them. The only "crafty" things I do reguire patterns which I follow exactly, that way I can't make a mistake.

As I have mentioned previously, I love to read, anything and everything and I am currently reading Women Artists by Elke Linda Buchholz, a wonderful book that "surveys five hundred years of artistic output from a pantheon of women who broke rules, defied convention, and paved the way for generations to follow". What must it have been like in the past for women who were artistic and couldn't express themselves because they were women? How frustrated and limited those women must have felt who did paint and who then had to fight to have their work acknowledged. And after fighting for this right, at death so many women were forgotten, their work said to have been the work of males, or forgotten and discarded.

And I worry that my sisters are better than me? I need to grow up, I think, and put my fears of inferiority aside and let my artistic side loose. Who knows what might be lurking inside me, waiting for an opportunity to be expressed. I am all that holds me back, not my sisters, not the males of this world, only me, myself and I. And I am begging to be set free", I whisper.

Are you listening?