Have you heard any of these: “You’re so lucky,” “I wish I could do that,” and “It must be nice.” These fire me up. Why? Because it assumes what you did/do was easy and without its challenges. Why should someone have to justify the good things in their life? For me, to speak of any of the challenges I have faced feels like a betrayal to the person I have willed myself to be.
I paint, yes, and maybe I am good at it, but the only thing I have truly mastered is how to turn every bad experience in my life into something I can look at. That is the truth. If you want to know how much I have been through, just look at how much I create. All of those creations are an an indication of how much pain and trauma I have had to process. I have taught myself to take the ugly of my life and shake the pretty truth out of it onto pages and paper. What you get to see is a byproduct of that art form.
Getting my residency in Greece was not luck. It took thirty years of dedication, countless rejections and attitudes, and dealing with negativity from people. I wanted to give up so many times, but I never did. I still fight it on the daily because inspiration is a fickle lady.
I wish I could do that. Then do! Find a way around the obstacles. And if you can’t find a way around them, find a way through them. That is what my dysfunctional childhood taught me – resilience. It’s a muscle; you can build it, and you do so through challenges.
It must be nice. Working in movies has been a rewarding and challenging career. It isn’t “nice” that helped me hone my craft the past 25 years. It is persevering through various forms of harassment, egos the size of Everest, and some of the most physically toxic environments you can imagine.
Life handed me what it did, and I mustered all the strength to make something good out of it. Every. Single. Time. Extracting the inspiration from the guts of life has left me with pages of hope and paintings of navigation, True North, it’s what we are here for.
I have helped countless people experience inspiration and find their way. You can literally do anything you put your mind to. You can power through any experience you are going through. And if you don’t have enough belief in yourself, you can borrow some of mine.
Stay the course,
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