There isn't any separation between life and art. We use the same core tools to create a painting as we do with any other action we take in this world. I had a career as a visual artist for 12 years. In the beginning I focused on creating works of beauty. I started to have some challenges as I progressed with my career. I learned that in order to paint anything on a piece of paper or a canvas I had to go deeper within myself to connect with something beyond who I thought I was.

I learned that creating art was more than creating pretty pictures. I did 5 different styles of art. Some of my art was there to make me a quick buck to take care of my survival needs. Other pieces I explored the use of colour and texture. Along with my art I was also doing more meditation at the time. I started to shift to bring more of a focus for my work. I had the idea that I should focus on what I wanted to experience in my life. I started to put those ideas onto paper, canvas and silk.

There would be times when I would be standing back looking at a piece of my art and I would notice faces that had appeared without me intending to paint them. Sometimes I would feel like I was being downloaded with energy as I was at work.

As I progressed with my career as an artist I started to have words and lines to poetry come to me as I would be working on a painting. I would have people look at my work and see things that I had never noticed in the creation of the piece. At times I felt like I was sorting out a bunch of jigsaw puzzles that had all been thrown in together in one box. I would receive some sentences to a poem that matched a painting that I had temporarily put aside so I would write them and sort which verses went with which paintings.

I discovered that some of what was in my subconscious was coming out onto an art piece. I had one woman that looked at one of silk paintings and saw a face in the painting. This was a silk painting of a woman looking up at the moon with outstretched arms. All you saw was the back of her hair. Well in the hair this woman saw a face. Then I realized what she was talking about. I saw a very angry face that looked like that of a girl. In doing the artwork I had stepped onto a path of healing my inner child.

Someone else that saw the painting when it was finished gave a totally different view of the work. I had covered over the face in the hair with roses. This man who was a long standing friend of my family mentioned that to him it looked it didn't look like a moon. He thought it looked like someone whose soul had been set free. He saw the influence of my Ukrainian heritage in my work. He said that it was modernized but he could see the connection.

Over the years my poetry and my art has manifested in my life. I hear people talking about what I have written in my poetry and what I was painting back then. I learned just how powerful we all are as creator beings using our thoughts and emotions as paint brushes of communication that go out to the world. When we put it into writing and other mediums we create no matter what they are we are creating our world. Some people focus on the struggle and strife of the outer world and others focus on an inner vision for outer manifestation. We all have a choice. The planet is our canvas.

Learn more about this author, Linda Sajiw.
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