Loving Life

I've had an on and off relationship with art over my lifetime. Of course when you are little, you create art without a care in the world and enjoy the process of creating all the wonderful things in your mind. However, over time that careless creativity came to a grinding halt as I put judgment on my work and compared it to those around me. I grew up in a family of extremely talented artists and, being the youngest in the family, I felt like I was never as good as them, so I stopped doing art and settled for being the "musical one".  In high school, I discovered the joy of colored pencils and my art world opened back up a little. I did a few drawings here and there for people I loved and enjoyed the process of bringing joy and delight through visual art. But soon a busy life with marriage and then kids started and I had little time or energy to do any sort of art. I got my colored pencils back out when David was about two and drew this butterfly below for a friend af...