I have painted off and on for years, with varying degrees of success. I sold fluid art through stockists/interior designers in (2011-13), then I took a break.
I joined IG early 2016 and painted hard for a solid year with zero success; was a copycat (see my last post); then got so deflated with it all I said 'that's it, I'm done, I quit'. Of course we all know that just because I stopped painting, didn’t stop me looking at IG incessantly watching other artists do their thing, while I sat there ‘festering’ on the side-lines. You know my line by now...'I could paint that'. Brene Brown’s quote captures this so beautifully - 'unused creativity isn’t benign. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear'. No guesses as to where I was sitting!
So a year later (Dec 17) we moved to a home with space, and in the following months I started dabbling in art again. Here's where the story gets interesting - you just never know how your journey may be influencing someone else's. This artist @camilla.cicoria doesn't even know how much her story impacted mine (well that is until now)😬 We started IG the same time; had similar styles/colour palette; liked each other's work and had about the same number of followers. During my hiatus, I didn’t see her posts and then I stumbled across her page again (IG curating again). It hit me so hard, I was ‘gutted’….. as I saw that Camilla had now jumped up massively in both her success and following (totally warranted of course). It was a catalysing moment for me, as bottom line Camilla to her credit had kept going, I’d given up - and here we were world’s apart. As difficult as it was to accept, in that moment something shifted in me. I made a decision to start painting again, and not stop or give up until I had made it.
Thank you Camilla for showing up with tenacity and grit - your example honestly gave me the push I needed. I hope this post or my story might be instructive for someone else who's currently side-lined with a dream or a pursuit that's sitting dormant - this is your kick-starter moment.
Love to hear if you've given up and how you got back in the game?
