The universe depends on you

If you’re reading this now, it probably means you are plowing around the Internet for clues regarding your artistic journey. Maybe you want to paint, but you may be reluctant because someone might laugh at you. You may be a beginner, or you may be a old pro. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter where we are along the journey, just that we make the trip.

Painting is a vital and elemental task - almost holy - with a pulse all its own. If you have a hankering to paint, your life will never be complete until you do it. It reminds me of a TV show I saw the other night about how salmon endure all dangers and outlast obstacles and enemies (and even their own biological clock) to make the journey back home to spawn. It’s written in their DNA to complete this journey, in a destiny decreed by some force beyond the fish itself.

We artists are a bit like those salmon.

Our society at large may not quite grasp this, but there is an empty space waiting between here and eternity that only you can fill.

Somehow, the universe will not rest until we begin to fill it. That, I believe, is the source of the nagging “I should be painting” feeling we often get when idle.

It will prod us, poke us, make us restless and fill us with some vague longing until we begin. And if we resist, if we never take the risk and begin our journey, then something is left undone, leaving a silent cavity where something never was that was meant to be.

Do your part. The universe depends on you.