Watercolor Kick

 

In case you’ve missed it, I’ve been on a watercolor kick lately. I blame Shauna the Art Teacher for this hyper-focus. Her Wednesday morning art classes opened a whole new world to me, and I can’t seem to explore that world enough these days.

 

The problem is that I’m limited in what I can paint. If it’s abstract or geometric, then I’m there. If it’s a real, distinct object or image, then I’m not.

 

And so I ended up with a whole bunch of abstract images on my desk last week. Many of them looked like pretty backgrounds for other images, yet I couldn’t see what to put in the foreground.

 

That’s when Barb the Art Teacher made her ground breaking suggestion: Haiku them!

 

And so I did.

 

I ended up writing five haikus to go with my paintings:

 

Rainbow of color

Endless possibility

Bursting into life

 

Cracked, jagged edges

Broken with time, yet stronger

I am beautiful  

 

Ev’ry day is new

A chance to begin again

Possibility

 

This is not the end

It’s only the beginning

There is so much more

 

It seems so simple

From acorn into mighty

The oak tree does grow

 

I made over 60 little rainbow paintings to go with the first haiku and gave them to everyone on my school staff. 

 

And now I have a whole bunch of other little haiku-ed paintings just hanging around. [If you’d like one, let them know. I’m happy to send one to you in the mail.]

 

My therapist says that it’s good to create—to process and channel what’s inside through songs, singing, poems, painting, and word art. I have to agree.

 

So create something today, friend. A poem, a painting, a puzzle, a scribble, a prayer, a dance, a song, anything! Just create and see what comes.

 

I’m learning that the “good” or “bad” of the outcome isn’t what matters. It’s the process. The process changes us…and, in the end, we change the world.  

 

Amen.