I awoke one morning to know myself as an artist.  I did not see things differently but thought of the world in a new way.  Each block down the street spoke to me differently.  The light played gently off the water in new ways.  I felt an obligation to emptiness. 

Perhaps it was that for years there was no direct passion, nothing that moved me until art.  Why was it that when I sat down at a table I could remove the cork from the bottle of my brain and let the wine flow?  I did not even know if wine then, perhaps that is why it flowed so easily.  After all, I was only a young girl of the age of fifteen.

It is years later, that I come home from drilling and screwing, tightening and brushing, I that my arms ache, my head is tired, but still I feel an obligation to emptiness.  This world depends on us in a way, to think harder and more freely.  I think to myself of a world without art, a world without artists.  There would be no music, no color.  Or would there be?

Who are we all – we who call ourselves artists? Aren’t we the same as the person sitting next to us who to some also can be artists?  Is It just opening a mind to being, to thinking, to inquiring, that makes one an artist? Is there an artist in us all? Have we who have chosen to be artists, chosen that path for ourselves or is it something more?

There is a determination to make your work, to come home late from hours of working, tired back, callused hands, dry eyes and then wake up early to do it again.  It is all to experience that moment when your work is experienced, beyond the commenting, beyond the analysis.  It is almost all for your own moment of completion and then the completion of the piece when it is shared with the world.

Then we can breathe again and feel that the air can be within us.  Is there no longer that feeling that exists?  I forget day in and day out why, but those moments in between are what feed my existence.  Not the slides, not the statements, not the praise, but those moments when any work is brought to life by momentarily being part of someone else’s.

I believe in you understanding me

Now can you tell me what it is you need

It is words that put you in touch with my mind

Or colors so bold that make you realize I am divine

I believe in you being able to hear me

Not to just accept what the experts say

In the space I create

The more you can generate

Then I can feel that you see

I believe in the arts

Spreading out far past us smarts

To a level on which all can relate

Not just us within the artistic gates

I believe that the air is to be free

To give and to take

To be and to leave

What we chose to isolate

Can be what we create

This is the belief in me.