The mystery of art

There are times when making art is SO hard that I wonder why I keep on persevering. But then I have a day like yesterday and I know.

It's for those moments when the art seems to make itself. When I'm merely the medium through which it comes to be. I have an idea for a Journal Quilt, based on a theme produced by someone else. And all of a sudden there it materializes. My hands grab silk fabrics, then a pencil to draw the design out of graph paper. Seemingly effortless the colours come together, the idea in my mind takes shape under my hands, and it is somehow more and better than I had imagined it to be. A whole long day has passed and at the end of it what I have made almost in a trance is amazing, even to myself.

Those are magical moments, to be treasured and remembered when the going gets a lot tougher. Those are times, the memory of which carries me through all the difficult moments of my life by simply knowing I had them and will have them again.

Such is the mystery of art and it can be compared to the mystery of nature when you plant a bulb and then, one wonderful day, the flower appears such as this pink hyacinth. Both leave me wondering about the forces at work there. Religion is one of the answers but not for me, but if not that, what?