I get asked a lot if I ever took art classes. In the eighth and ninth grades, when given the choice to paint or be forced to use a sewing machine, I chose painting. And so those were the only two art classes I've ever taken.

I learned to paint from Bob Ross. No, really. I watched and watched and watched him paint on TV, and one day I said, "I can do that." So, I bought a canvas and paints and painted my first landscape. Painting is pure enjoyment for me. When I get into a painting "mode" I can sit and paint for hours. I get lost in the world I'm creating on canvas. Other times, it may take me months to complete a piece.

One of my favorite things is a blank canvas. A blank canvas is a whole world just waiting to be created. The best thing about painting is that you can paint as much as you like, or as little as you like. You go at the pace that creativity allows you. If you make a mistake, it can always be fixed. If you feel like a tree "lives right there" or if a rock is "resting right here", you add it. (Be sure to make the little "whooshing" sounds that Mr. Ross always made.) Or! Painting can be abstract where you, as the artist, may interpret it one way, but someone else may interpret it a completely different way.

Painting is all about feelings. It begins with a feeling. Things are added and taken away based on feelings. A painting is complete when the artist feels like it's complete. Then, the world can interpret the painting based on new and different feelings.

I think of life as a painting. It's all about feelings. Sometimes, life comes at you so hard, so fast that you get lost in whatever world you're in. Other times, it may take you weeks and weeks or sometimes even months to figure things out. Things are added or taken away constantly. Sometimes your painting is blended with someone else's painting. Your vision slowly and surely becomes the same. Eventually, you create whole new worlds and colors, and maybe even a little tree "lives right there". Yet, then there will be times, even when your painting is blending with another, that you just want to paint on your own. And that is OK. (No one said you can only have one painting. What would the world be like if every artist was limited to only one painting. There may be no [enter your favorite painting here].)

Life is always, always abstract. The way you interpret it is up to you, the artist. It is what you make of it.

The thing about MY life right now is everything just feels right.

WAIT. I think a little tree lives *right there*. (Yes, I made the whooshing sound.) And maybe a rock will rest over.....