ALIVENESS TO SHARE

Love Note to Tomorrow / 2017 / Mixed media collage / Russell C. Smith

All along the way, it turns out there’s always more aliveness to share. Of course, you never know at the beginning. Driven by curiosity. Intent on pushing through. If anyone tried to smother your gift, or prevented you from using it, you somehow knew enough to say no silently inside your head, as well as not just internally but eternally, You stood up and protected your visions and scrawlings with all your heart. No matter who tried to stop the growing aliveness of art from spilling out of you – school, culture, family. No one held the power to prevent you from doing what meant the most to you. Eyes focused upon wonder let you know more than you first imagined. Lucky you (while it often felt like a curse) found out you were a creator early, which did nothing to prevent years of struggle. You learned to feed your creativity with books, movies, art galleries, concerts, and museums. Being in touch with making things begins and continues at any age. Entering the state of aliveness, knowingness, another level of awareness. Under any circumstance. Even when you paint a mysterious shape you don’t know what it is or where it came from. Even when it feels like you’re miles and miles away from the idea you were standing next to yesterday. Even when you’re lost in the wilderness of your mind and pathways to the light aren’t appearing. Even when the ship of state is sailing toward a rocky coastline, you continue making what you must make. Art lives in your bloodstream. In it’s purest form, it’s a life uplifter and a hate killer. Seeing openness within and feeling open-heartedness. Sensing the source, and feeling it to be neverending.