Author: Joy Murray

It’s my 60th day of practicing the daily draw/paint, so I did a self portrait.  I woke up this morning feeling light-hearted.  Over the week-end, I processed some lingering emotions over a heartbreak by writing a letter, and today I woke up with pleasant memories of things I did with that person.

I’m letting go.  I’m getting lighter.  My field of vision is not as clouded and I can celebrate life again.

In working on paintings of my ancestors and my children, I’ve felt a sense of connection.  The energy and color of the past passing through me and onto my children.

Acceptance of things past, dreams of the future  — heartbreak and healing and growth — that’s the stuff of life.

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

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

I’m definitely more comfortable drawing and painting made-up people than doing actual portraits.  Today I rushed through a portrait of my mom, trying to capture her fiery personality.  She loved animal prints and I painted too wet, so the leopard spots ran.  My mother had a quick temper and was impatient.  I guess I come by own impatience honestly enough.  She was a petite and beautiful woman.  She liked to keep her hair short and dyed a brassy red.  I’ll try again to paint her more accurately but I’m pleased with the energy of this one.

I used Daniel Smith Mayan red and yellow, the brightness made me happy.

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