I am on a Quest!

I have had inspiration this week and some resolution to some questions that I have had for a very long time.  It is so amazing when you finally receive resolution to a question that you have had for so long.  You want to jump up and down and dance and sing and hug and smile.  Can't say I have done all of these, but I am smiling inside with the knowledge that has come to me.

You may wonder what my question has been?  It's about my work and why I paint?  What is my purpose as an artist?  Does it have a purpose? 

I have always believed that there is purpose in everything we do. We come with talents and gifts and we have purpose with our lives. Yet why is it that we struggle to find that purpose? I am a mother that is a given, because I chose to have children. Yet how we mother would then be the question? My mother job is very important to me as is my art world, which really isn't separated at all. I mother along with painting because my children exist with my paintings. They do art around me while I am working or with other people teaching them. So art is around us all, as is our lives and it is what we make of these experiences that then become what we chose to make them. So as I think of my role as mother and I am mainly mother without the wife connected to it, although I still see myself as wife, just that my husband isn't visible anymore, except in dreams and oh I love it when he comes in my dreams. They are such tender memories. So I am a mother trying to make the most of my situation and to help my sons become great men. For the last soooo many years it seems that we just exist in so many ways and that is alright, but I can't live like this, I have to have deeper roots and deeper feelings about things.

So this week I received that spark that answered my question as to why art and why am I gifted in this area?  I love nature and I love sunsets and sunrises and bursts of clouds.  I love light and how so many colors come out of different times of day and the reflections and the intensity and all the wonderful creations.  I love the palette of nature, whether it be the muted browns and umbers of winter or the brilliant colors of late summer and fall.  Nature is the grandest of all in her display of so many BEAUTIFUL things and colors.  This is what I have tried to paint for so long, but didn't see it in the way that I see it now.  I was longing for our eternal home where light and life is in abundance.  I found and find myself on a journey in search of this more and more.  Spiritually and physically I am searching for greater knowledge and understanding of how we can be filled with more light and life and come to know this light and life.  Beauty!  My next post will talk more about this.

These are pictures from the week.

These are pictures taken by my young son.  I like his perspective on our two dogs.



Lots of soggy ground.



Raspberry patch.

I'm looking for things that are beautiful.  I like how the pinecones grow.

 We were in the mist of a snowball fight as I was taking pictures.  I kept avoiding them until.......

this one.....He hit my camera lense right on.  Good aim! Wet lense!