Painting softly words in my mind... the tangential thought moves towards a picture, lightly caressing the edges of my mind. I paint with words now. I miss my art. I have a good friend who has motivated me to both paint and sing, and I wish to do that more in 2015. I am joining a local band to work on four songs, and I sing almost every other week at my church… but I have been lacking in the visual art area of my life. FB, good for something other than sharing my blog posts, has inspired me to post photos of my own as well as artists’ art who I love and respect. So I am going to use these five days of art research to get in touch with painters who have inspired me over the years. Today’s guest artist is Kathe Kollwitz, a German antiwar propagandist and etcher from World War II. I have read her auto biography and she would go on long country walks and argued that most of the human race was bi-sexual, homosexuality existing on a scale for all of us. But mostly she was motivated during a disturbing and epic time in our history to give voice to the suffering in the wake of the war and speak out against war in general. An incredibly talented woman, she has been one of the most influential public figures in my life.

Painting, art, singing and writing have always been tools, and surrounded by the purpose of saying something or speaking out on a truth. Singing is like prayer, and if done right, is a very raw form of this self-expression, for one can feel and listen to the very motivations and emotions behind the words one is singing. I too, stay in the moment of this prayer/expression. Art should be true expression. It should reach deep into the inner worlds of pain and speak the raw truth of one’s inner voice. I am grateful to be gifted talents of creativity, and call myself an artist. I hope to value and utilize these gifts in order to say something, and give voice to something from deep within in 2015.