life as art, art as life

I can say, in all honesty, I envy Julie. She is smart and lovely and has a degree (well, two) in Humanities. She has a knack for combining art and life in a very accessible way and I read her blog, Mental Tesserae, religiously. And often find some religious enlightenment, to go along with it.

A few years ago I took up painting. I needed a creative outlet--one that didn't require words since my mind was basically boycotting words and any memory of words etc., etc. If you're a mother, you may recognize that kind of mental burn-out. So anyway, I took up painting; not completely out of the blue. I had done some painting all growing up. My family tree is hung occasionally with portraits done in watercolor or oil pastels or something. My foray into acrylic paints and canvas was accompanied by a desire to delve deeper into a knowledge of art, and so I bought an old humanities text book, and another book on art that I started to read.

A few months after that we moved and I had a baby, and another baby and moved again. That entire excursion sort of wiped out my ability to either study or paint, but in the meantime I found out about blogging, and discovered Julie's blog (from the beginning, I might add), and was thrilled! My own personal online course! I still plan on getting through those art books, and my easel makes it out of the closet from time to time. But for now, Julie's writing about art informs me much better, and more elegantly than I could inform myself.

Julie is this week's guest at Just an Orange. Of course you'll want to check it out. It's wonderful.