Artist in the Making?

This summer I took a watercolor class with one of my good friends. My artwork may not be fantastic, but it was fun and I learned a lot about not being too serious about art in general. Art is about play, and letting go of your inhibitions and worries that you're not good enough and just having fun with color and shapes and laughing a lot. Everyone wants to create, and we often don't want to take the chance of being laughed at, or feeling stupid, when we should just be having fun.

My 81 year old neighbor still loves to create. She fashions magnets out of little pieces of plastic that you melt together with an iron. She made dogs, flowers, smiley face suns, butterflies. She glues magnets on the back so that her art can be hung on a refrigerator.

People create with their yards all the time - and look at all the time we spend decorating our faces and our bodies (I'm not talking tattoos here, but clothing!). Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said we should be more like little children - they create with a freedom and abandon that we don't know as adults. That's one of my goals this year - to give up a little seriousness, and make a little more room for art and laughter!

Madeline L'Engle has a great book on art: "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art". It's one of my favorite books of all time :-)