Compassion & Painting

Sometimes my heart gets so overwhelmed with compassion that it begins to suffocate me. This usually happens after hours of painting.

It can be lonely as an Artist, you see,

and my mind tends to travel.

On the journey I start to see those dear hearts that wander the world searching. I start to feel the pain of those I meet who wish they could find their purpose, or understand what beauty they add to this world. Sometimes I can trace the faces of youth–tainted with suffering—trapped by drugs and crime and a family legacy of pain.

I don’t know where all this comes from.

I don’t know if I am channeling something greater. Or if my imagination likes to try to pull me down when I’m feeling so assure of myself and my strengths.

But I do my best to keep painting.

Even when I question what all this painting is really about.

It would be fruitless to get all philosophical. It’s best to keep it simple.

I paint because it makes me happy. It always has. Ever since I was a witty bitty.

And I finally stopped searching. I finally gave into me.

Maybe that’s why I get so choked up–

Maybe that’s why my painting has taken on so much more then just an act of creativity.

It’s my link to the Universe.

It’s the way I was meant to navigate this planet.

And that makes me connected to every being.

Including you

and the strangers I pass on the street.

But most especially it connects me to me.

I think the compassion I feel

for a mirage of strangers

is just a disguise—

for the compassion I feel

that is meant to heal the parts of myself I’ve neglected for so long.