Six months ago, I was not painting. In fact, I had not picked up a paintbrush in more than a decade.

Five months ago, I brought home some watercolor supplies and started dabbling.

Three months ago, I started painting a lot and sharing my work.

Art has been the lightning-bolt epiphany of my 2018.

I am so happy to be making art, and although I can appreciate and understand the timing of it all, I am also sad there was a decade of my life that I wasn’t.

I had two primary objections to creating art of my own: I believed it didn’t really matter (or at the least the kind of art I would make wouldn’t really matter), and I believed I was not artistically gifted enough.

The shift started when I heard Fabeku Fatunmise talk about art and how/why it matters - that art is a transmission of energy and talisman of magic. I began to see for myself how art is a portal into a language, experience, and world beyond words, how art creates a bridge into what we can access no other way.

I began to notice how art was transforming me. And then I began to imagine how I might take the energy inside of me and make it into shapes, forms, and images on paper too.

Suddenly, it didn’t really matter how much talent I had. I wasn’t trying to paint a picture that could be mistaken for a photograph; I was trying to take an energy inside of me and make a thing that transmitted that same power and frequency.

Art has created so much magic and connection in my life this year – as I’ve taken in others’ art and shared my own.

If you have your own objections to making whatever art calls to you, I hope you recognize those as the lies they are - and see that the world needs your art and will be a more magical and alive place if you create it.