It is surprising enough to learn one has creative juices without thinking about how to get them to "flow". As an active artist I have found more people who say they wish they could do what I do. They never seem to believe the statement when I tell them at one time I did not know how to create what they were admiring and that it is only in the past 10 years of my life that I have been creating works of art.
Everyone presumes and tells me that I must have the talent to do whatever it is I happen to be working on at that moment. The answer is an emphatic NO! What I really have is no fear of failure.
I firmly believe that I can do anything I set my mind to. I have proved that during motherhood and I am sure I made lots of mistakes raising 5 kids, but each one got easier. Raising 5 children really can get your creative juices flowing.
I proved that in a 43 year career of real estate investments and I know I made mistakes, ones that cost many dollars, but each mistake was a learning lesson in how not to do something in that field and those successes and failures continued to keep my creative juices flowing.
Then 10 years ago, at the age of 63 when I started to paint, I found out it was like anything else. Practice, drill and rehearse and each painting lead to something else that started my creative juices flowing. Setting aside certain hours each day to allow those creative juices to flow was an essential key.
I learned that not worrying about what anyone thought of my paintings helped greatly. Oil paintings lead me to try watercolors which lead me to looking at the world in a totally different way. I discovered the light in the Mediterranean was different from the light in Kentucky and that made my creative juices flow. I discovered there never is just a green color and that made my creative juices flow allowing me to discover a myriad of greens or better still a myriad of colors that make up green. I learned that the green in Ireland was different from the green in Kentucky .
Different kinds of art paper allowed my creative juices to discover oil pastels and soft pastels and to play with them and experiment. Wow, my world was expanding and the joy and wonderment of the masses of colored chalk was so fulfilling.
The joy of colors lead me into colored glass which took my creative juices into the world of stained glass which lead to fused glass and its many wondrous techniques. Who know where all this will end. I think on the day that my mind and hands stop working.
Don't wait for time and talent. Find time in your busy schedule to make your creative juices flow and if you practice enough and put your fear aside, talent will blossom.
