I Am An Artist
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In my joy space
Happy International Artists Day!
We artists dream UP and create a more beauty-full world!
I have been an artist my whole life- making a little book by hand, sewing a mini purse out of an old jeans’ back pocket, creating a rag doll from a kit, collecting and pressing flowers into the pages of a heavy book- from an early age I used my hands to give birth to my ever flowing ideas. And then there were the words that I filled journal upon journal with, starting at 10 when I documented my daily outfits and confided the confusing feelings I felt when I saw that one particular boy at school... a few years later I was a freelance travel writer for the local newspaper at age 14.
As a teenager I dreamed of going to art school (and to write books and design their covers and to be a psychologist and a dancer), but I lived on a small island in the middle of the Caribbean and the local university’s only offered majors were pre-law, economics and I believe, mathematics. I wanted to follow my friends who went to France to attend college after we all graduated from high school, but my doctor mother and engineer father felt I was too “naive” to be let loose into the world, and so, pre-law became my only option...
Much water has since flown through the banks of the river that is my life, its meanders seeing me become through the years a film producer, a corporate writer/photographer and an energy healer, amongst other hats I’ve gotten to wear- and although I never fulfilled my art school dream (yet?), I nevertheless became a working artist. Today I joyously create every day for a living, using a variety of mediums, from painting, to designing textiles and clothing, freeform embroidery, photography, collage, or writing. I just published my first travel ebook, along with a companion calendar. I dove into the NFT world last March and am soon launching a scarf collection. I share my yoga pants, art prints, custom talismans and a variety of products printed with my art in the marketplace. I spend my days working in and on my art business and I generate income selling what I create. I am an artist.
I soaked up my love for bold colors from the environment I grew up in, surrounded by tropical foliage, big bright flowers, and an emerald sea. I am a forever beauty seeker, most inspired by the sacred geometry of the natural world. I truly believe we humans are all creative by nature, and I have chosen to use that energy to imagine new possibilities and figure out ways to make them a reality. Evolution demands of us an ever renewed ability to find innovative solutions in order to solve big and small challenges. We artists have a natural propensity for looking at the world we are living in, asking those very questions that can open new pathways, and then actually stepping forth into these uncharted territories.
Becoming an artist and having the courage to refer to myself as one has been a lifelong process of growth, and of pushing through externally imposed limitations, as well as burning up layer upon layer of internal conditioning. I was the first in my immediate family to make art not only my avocation but my actual vocation, besides my great uncle Lazlo Gara, a renown poet and journalist in Hungary and France. My paternal grandfather Andor was a great photographer, and his two sons, one of them my father, followed in his footsteps, but all three supported their families with work that actually paid the bills, saving their passion for side projects and the weekends.
On my mother’s side, there is my great grandmother Lucie, of West African heritage, who made all of her clothes by hand, and passed on her love of sewing when she showed me how to custom dress my dolls using fabric remnants. My mother was always very creative and decorated our home with exotic textiles she fashioned into pillows, table covers and curtains. However she only leaned into her love for painting colorful landscapes after I prompted her to take some classes upon retiring. The rest of this family line has always favored the safety of government-secured jobs, becoming teachers, nurses or administrators.
And so it took a lot for me to stand up and declare myself a creatrix. Standing up to generational expectations and negative projections. Standing up to cultural conditioning and to gender bias. Standing up to my fears of not fulfilling my purpose and to my insecurities as a multicultural woman of color of with no role models growing up, but nourished by an unabated desire to express my unique soul and share what it is that makes me Me.
Calling myself an artist is a privilege I do not take for granted. It is a title I have earned through decades of experimenting, learning, failing and of course, creating. Though we all channel creative energy, to harness that power and use it to serve our deepest dream, and in the process reach a point of sharing the fruits of our creations with others, is nothing short of a tour de force, in this society. In my experience at least, becoming an artist has meant forgoing the paved road to explore wild jungles, with only my heart as a guide, but intuitively knowing I was being carried along by waves of so many others who, like me, didn’t consider giving up on their childhood dream a possibility.
The world we live in needs artists. Our planet Earth needs us all to come up with creative ways to solving pressing global issues. Whatever you dream of doing, make your art your life work. Make your life a work of art. So that the life that flows through you may reach others and deliver to them gifts of inspiration and expansion.
Happy creating today and every day!
