Inspire YOURSELF today

I once thought of people when I painted.
I once thought of escape from drudgery and pain.

Now I have no drudgery (gone be that drudgery)
Now I have no pain.  (gonna have to explain that one)

Now I paint to just express the colors in my soul.
Now I paint to celebrate all that embodies being just me.

Painting and being inspired by long dear friends is a slippery slope.
I mean, they are there and they hold up your laughter and your cheer.
But they are not something to paint to.  They are something to live to.

So today I will inspire myself to paint and to just feel it.
Just embrace the realness of doing what comes so naturally to me.

Taking this breath and breathing it out again.
Taking this breath and in that moment picking up the brush
or the palette knife, or the scraper, or the grooved edge, or the
long metal edge and pushing paint on the canvas into itself.
Making it play nice with others and create the globules and impressions
that only it can do under my hand.
It is truly not me.
It is a push and a drag of my hands.
It is a stroke and an application of paint colors that I choose.
But truly the combination that ensues is NOT me.
It is energy and push to go there, true.

But the muse takes over and the drudgery and pain is gone.
I am now light and air and lost in it.

I am now only knee deep in expression and the joy of having that blank
canvas in my life to delve into.  To push paint on.
To carve out the layer that says it all.