When chaos fills my heart, I paint.

It aches so much I feel like my heart is about to shatter into a million more teeny pieces than it already had. When I think it is mending, healing, it explodes again. Louder.

I curve my body into a ball and sob in the dark. I cry all I can to release the pain that occupies my being. I did something stupid because I did not want to care anymore, caring hurts too much sometimes. I drank, asked to my husband to make me a cocktail strong in alcohol and added a glass of wine on top of it. I told you it was something stupid…

I had a choice: either leave, or use that pain to create something out of it. With hindsight, I know I was really close to say ciao bye bye and just leave. But I picked the latter, because I am not a quitter. So I coped as I usually do:

I went downstairs in my Teal Studio, closed the door (which I never do), put the music very loud and grabbed the biggest piece of canvas board I have found, it is a strange size: 10×14″ (usually it is 11×14″). I picked colors that my heart was bleeding, red and white, a palette knife and decided to let it out. The pain, the frustration, the despair, my tears. It is all on this canvas. I let her come to me, I did not think about what I was doing, and it actually felt good to just DO. I don’t say I want to experience this again, alcohol induced art. Some artists create amazing stuff because they were under the influence of something, but I don’t want to be one of them. I wonder how to use these negative feelings that come and go as a catalyst to great art.

All I do is from my feeling. They are all part of what I am living on the moment they come to life. Meet Deirdre:

Truth is… sometimes I feel like my life sucks. I feel like I can not take it any more. I feel like my art is shitty, and if my art is unworthy, so am I. But this is the stories I tell to myself as an excuse.

Art heals, brushstroke after brushstroke. Smudging the oil pastels with the fingers. Letting the energy passing from my heart to my art.

She came out strong, no hesitation for one bit when I was letting her emerge from the chaos in my heart. She freely came to life, effortlessly. And she accomplished her mission of putting things from my inside to something I can look at. A visible reminder. However, I know she belongs to somebody else, someone who like me ached and need that reminder that from our tears and chaos, greater things can come up. I wrote a bit more of Deirdre’s story on Etsy. You can go read if you feel the pull (I invite you, gently, to…).