Painting is my oxygen mask..

It’s taken me a long time to understand how life-giving my painting practice is. I can not imagine life without it. It’s the one thing I look forward to and when I’m painting I feel revived. It makes me wonder why something as vital to my well-being has not been my priority until now.

Plenty of ‘good reasons’ come to mind but none worth giving up painting for. A big one was I didn’t have time, well yes I did not have time to create masterpieces but I would have had time to be with my painting process for 20 minutes. I did not value the process I thought my value as a painter was based on how many paintings I sold. I now understand that the greatest value is in showing up for my painting no matter the result, it’s connecting to my artist self that holds the real value for me. I suppose it’s part of the journey and it was up to me to come to that realisation . I’m glad I made it.