I’m continuing my artistic assault upon my family. Drawing my loved ones has been such a humbling experience. By allowing myself to look closely at them and examine the shapes of their faces, to think about their lives and my good fortune to know them, I feel so blessed.
Part of me is still afraid that I’m not good enough to even try to express the complex beauty of another human, especially not those I love. I persist, though, because I know part of it is the depressive voice trying to stop me. I also know that the more I draw, the better I will get at it. No one gets it perfect, all artists, writers and creative people are learning all their lives to get closer to perfection. No one gets to be perfectly perfect, though.
My challenge is to listen as attentively to positive voices and encouragement in my life as I do to negative voices and fear. That’s a challenge we all face, and making art, I believe, helps.
My son, Timothy Allen, is an artist and works in film and painting. He’s recently worked on a series of spheres:
Tim’s artist’s name is TheOuterCircle. If you’d like to see his work, it’s here.
I’m drawing daily to help manage depression, long-term disability, and life in general. If you’d like to see the beginning of this project, you can see it here. You can also follow me through WordPress or on Facebook.
Your thoughts and shares are appreciated
joy murray art~stories~life 
Loving your family paintings, just wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your lovely art work, and your struggles over “not good enough” – untrue! It all glows with energy and beauty. You are an inspiration. I must get back to drawing!
Thanks so much. So many of us struggle with the “not good enough” voice, I’m glad I keep doing what I’m doing in spite of it.
Yes! Draw!
It is so easy to discount the positive and then magnify the negative. As if we just “naturally” give more weight or validation to the negative. The positive we discount, “my friend is just trying to make me feel better” when we hear or feel a negative comment or observation it cuts like a knife ,”well, that jab MUST be true, otherwise, he/they/she wouldn’t have SAID it”.
One of the best bits of advice/healing I got from a psychiatrist was to stop perceiving that the bad in the world cancelled out the good, that negativity had more power than positivity. It’s a lifelong struggle to keep that in mind, and when I’m depressed, I forget and go back into taking the negative too seriously. I think everyone struggles with it. But, it requires self examination to return to a more positive state of mind. If I do that, I find the words I need to move forward.