Following our dreams

 

I made this little video to go with my newsletter for March. I was hoping so much to be able to film myself next to this painting while sitting on the couch, but my camera would not fit it all into the frame. So I am here just sitting on a table next to the painting. Maybe it is better that way. This way the painting fills up the whole frame. I don't think that I am made to do this the way other people do. It just never works for me. 

I went again into the Riverview Station in the River Arts District in Asheville the other day, this time to try and reconnect with an old friend. She wasn't there, so I went instead to my former studio-mate's studio. I'm so glad I did. I told her about how I feel about my life right now and how I feel like the things that are taking up my time are not my art and not what I really want to be doing. She was so encouraging. She didn't tell me it was impractical to be pursuing my art, she didn't tell me to do the "practical" thing. Instead, she told me how important it is to follow those threads in our life that resonate with our heart, the threads of our dreams. I feel like only artists do this for me. They get it. 

We talked a little bit about the threads I do feel right now, however small they are. I have a new friend who offered her shed to me to use as a studio for free. I have a good feeling about it. I talked to her about the stitching of indigo pieces together that I've been doing and how I am excited about that and that I reached out to someone I want to paint and she said yes. It's something.

She said that the headwaters of the Mississippi River are so small you can step over them, but that I am not at the headwaters. I already have a river going. I have already done a lot with my art. I thought, well maybe I wandered away from the river for awhile and now I am at a tributary headwater. 

I have been thinking about all these things and what comes up for me is this: The dreams we have for our lives never go away. I have known this for a long time. They don't leave. They stay. If we choose to follow them and pursue them, we enter into the "Portal", which is to say, heaven. We live the life we are meant to live. If we choose not to pursue them, we can burry them, we can ignore them, but they will always be there. They will be there on our death bed and we will wonder; what if...? 

This is why it feels so important to me to follow my heart no matter what.