At the end of January of this year I was given a unique opportunity to follow my dreams.
Ten years ago, upon graduating from the University of Washington with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing I chose the path of a 9-5 day job with stable hours and pay. We all need basic necessities to live: a roof over our head, food on the table. And being an artist, in most cases, does not provide a steady income. Even as I was graduating from the School of Art at UW our instructors were warning us, 'Unless you teach (and art teaching jobs are scarce,) you will have to support your artistic endeavors with a day job, not the other way around.' They scared us with the stereotype of a 'starving artist' like it was some sort of a boogie man. At first I tried to balance my art with the rest of my life, but gradually, the job, the new house, the day to day minutiae have become too demanding, I left my passion, my inspiration, my artistic skills, and shut the door on it all, saying I simply don't have time. And a part of me, a big part, started to atrophy, die off. It made me unhappy, but I didn't know how to find my way back. I imagine most artists have a similar experience at some point in their life.
Sad and dissatisfied with life and myself I cherished a wish that maybe some day the circumstances would be such that I wouldn't need to maintain a day job, but could stay in my studio every day and paint, draw, create.
Years passed, my life has gone through a complete re-haul. I'm in a completely different place now, emotionally, figuratively, geographically. I have a wonderful man who loves me and who means the world to me. He is giving me this incredible gift of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to backtrack and retrieve what I'd lost along the way, to give my dream of being a full time artist a fighting chance.
And so a new, and exciting, and scary chapter of my life begins.