This picture was done during a time where a feeling of great despair had bubbled up within me.  I did not journal with it at the time and to do so now would be inauthentic and contrived.  However, I did feel a desire to share my process around the theme of this drawing.  Maybe as I write a voice may choose to be heard and felt if it felt safe enough to do so.  

There was an overall feeling of hopelessness that overcame me.  Like a black cloud that covers the sun that seems to go on forever.  I began this picture with the cloudy background to capture that feeling.  Next, came the road, or path, that I had found myself on.  “A road to God-knows- where in a hurry,” a part of me felt it was on.  Then, an intuition to make dark columns from the horizon up toward the heavens.  Foreboding monoliths towering over to suggest that there was no hope of salvation.   Lastly, I could feel my desire and passion being guarded, protected, quarantined,  or off limits.  A part of me felt it could not have what it truly wanted.   Enter despair.

This picture represents several parts of me all at once.  My inner sensitive, full passion, love, and sense of beauty.  My inner critic, with its perpetual barrage of criticisms, judgements, and punishments to keep my inner sensitive in a state of oppressive depression.  Then my inner muse.  My vision and creative energy.  My connection to the divine within and without.  A holy trinity, if you will.

The separation of a sensitive from its muse is part of a journey to remember what we, as artists, have always known ourselves to be.  Messengers, prophets, divine creators.  That comes with great reward as well as great pain.  To be open to such inspiration, one must be sensitive enough to receive it.  But that leaves the door open to much toxic energy and conditioning.  Through the course of one’s life, and even lives, these external influences can become internalized.  The inner critic is born.  But this part of us can be viewed as a “negative” to be combated and banished.  The emotional reality is that this part of us was developed to protect us from the pain our inner sensitive was too sensitive to digest.  By keeping constant surveillance on us, the inner critic is trying to keep us from being heart broken once again, even while it is breaking our own spirit in the process.

Before SoulFullHeart, my inner critic was a harsh self-punisher.  The bigger the desire, the harsher the punisher it seems.  But as I began to heal my punisher, it has softened to a critical voice.  Admittedly, I still feel some punishment but not as acute as in my past.  I am feeling my inner critic as my guide and keen protector of my inner sensitive.  Its voice is of my fathers, both biological and step.  They were just trying to do what they felt was best from their own experiences and conditioning to help me become successful and happy.  I am grateful for that, but it no longer serves me.  I am to be a father figure to my own inner sensitive.  To field the harsh criticisms and digest them between me and my inner critic, leaving my sensitive to be what it is meant to be…a receiver of divine beauty.

In this drawing, you will notice that there is space in between the bars.  There is opportunity.  There is a way in and through.  I will take the figure on the road by the hand and walk with him.  I will love the bars for what they truly are and in time they will come down to reveal my heart, my muse, and my gift to the world.