So, this is my blog! Ahhh!
Every self-respecting writer of the 21st century needs to consider how best to venture into this brave, but not so new, online world, where one just ‘SHOUTS IT OUT LOUD’…Then sits back, waiting for a readership to validate all that rushes raw from undefended passion.
The truth is, I have wanted to blog for a long time. But, I have had a problem: – I found the idea of writing continually about a subject, truly overwhelming, so assigned blogging to the too-hard-basket; thus procrastinated.
It needs to be said, the problem did not stem from a ‘drought’ of genre or content on which to blog; I wasn’t madly searching my inner-most-being for some topic, philosophy, idealism or suchlike. To the contrary, the task was, what to eliminate, from a brain that just won’t shut up! What to share with the world, (should the world be interested in my written voice), that I would not tire of… Being a been there, done that! kinda gal.
Amazingly enough, it took a change of country, a change of lifestyle and a change of the way I viewed myself, to see what was warming in my heart from infancy! During my free-fall I found the answer. It revealed itself like a colourful garden awakening out of the mist to be burnt off by the glow of the sun. I was awakened to the fact that this great consistent within me, had been a motivating force and inspiration these several decades past…Art. Yes – paint, pastels, charcoal; a banquet for the eyes and an emancipator of the soul. Art!
I have loved art from a very small child and although I wasn’t eloquent with crayons or paint brushes (lacked imagination as well as training) I perused it through primary, intermediate and secondary school to settle on pottery, which I was rather good at and through art history made dull by the teacher; yet never snuffed.
I come from an artistic heritage on both my mother and father’s side. I married a painter whose mother was fabulous with coloured pencils with a professional background in fashion design in London in the 1930’s. My husband and I have two daughters who are professional artists, with three other children enjoying recreational drawing. The other daughter is a fabulous writer…needed to mention that!
But, here is the thing. Indulge me for a moment while I deviate. As a young child around the age of eight I had several dreams for my life. I may share them with you one day; but one of those dreams was to write a book, be a novelist. I loved Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. I read the lot, being so inspired that I took my pencil and started writing and writing…then one day I just stopped, the moment died. The dream, however never did.
It was shortly after the birth of my fifth child that motivation to pick up a pen bought me to see my first published work. I wrote again, another lifestyle/philosophical work. I was on a roll people! Dinners were late to the table, the children ran out of clean socks continuously, I was to be found hiding out somewhere in the house being carried to another place and time.
One afternoon, shortly after my sixth child was born, while he slept, I sat down with a mug of tea and hydrated my soul in the pages of one of my many books on famous painters…I fell in love with a painting; and as I fell in love, I wanted to pick up a pen.
The painting Las Meninas, the artist Diego Velázquez of Spain and sometime later my first novel was published – Son of Spain.
Indulge me… allow me to indulge you. Join me on my flight of fancy to all things art. I invite you to read stories of how art has seasoned my life with flavour, peace, comfort and warm fuzzies!
Be seasoned too!
Antoinettejames.com 