A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words...

The wet brush glides across the canvas; I live in my own little world. This world I’m in, I’ve created. This world is full of the unknown, each stroke of the brush changes what was there before, sometimes making it better, sometimes worse. The stresses of life seem to just melt away as my mind turns itself off. Nothing matters now but transferring the wet masses of senseless color to the image slowly forming before my eyes.

Before September 2006 I’d never picked up a paintbrush and created anything worth looking at. Seeing as how at this point my career aspirations include nothing more than culinary arts I decided to try my hand at it. Painting comes naturally to me. It has become one of the precious moments of my day that I can focus on something other than the stresses of school and training. Waking early in the morning while everyone else remains asleep is my escape. Light streaming relentlessly through the blinds to the unknown darkness beyond gives away the secret of my secluded world to would be passerby. But I don’t care. Time has stopped moving, the world has stopped spinning all together and everything else has disappeared. All that remains is the brush in my hand. Hours seemed like mere minutes. Before I can realize what’s happening the blanket of darkness recedes as though the sunlight is fighting for its place in the sky. Reality comes rushing back, hitting me in the face like a cold wet snowball; startling and unwelcome.

I miss it like an old friend; I can’t tell you the last time I picked up a paintbrush. The early mornings became less and less until they were gone all together. Somehow I’ve lost the ability to switch off my brain and think of nothing but the blank canvas before me, maybe it’s because I haven’t put one there for awhile. Somewhere along the line something happened. Life got in the way of the fantasy world that I’d created for myself. I want to start painting again someday. Maybe when life figures itself out, and once again I have the chance to lock myself away and not worry about what’s going on with the rest of the world for a few hours I will. Now is not that time though. Now is about getting through each day and somehow managing to maintain a small scrap of sanity while doing so. My little world will still be there when I come back to it, exactly the same as it was when I left, but for now it’s just a memory.