filling my heart

I have lived most of my life without art as I now know it.

If any of you might have read my story here, you know my life story is really "not so climatic", as I lived out the very first part (17 years) of my life in the rural part of Texas...
which is really not that far from where I now live.

My first five years were spent on a small ranch just a couple miles down the road from the ice cream capital of the world (*wink*), Brenham, Texas, 

which is the home of Blue Bell ice cream!  YUM!  YUM!

I have so many memories of those days.  It often even amazes me, as we lived very VERY modestly, in a little "provided" wood frame house with a leaking roof when it rained.

But, I loved it there.  The bluebonnets were everywhere in the Spring, and the meadows full of tall green grass...which was ideal for a cattle ranch.

Perhaps if we would have stayed there, at that little ranch where my father was the foreman, I would have been able to take art lessons, as my older sister actually did in nearby Brenham.  

But, when I was five years old, my father had the opportunity to move closer (and make a better salary) to the area he and my mother were born, in New Ulm, Texas, which was only about 30+ miles from Brenham. 

This ranch, which was almost 600 acres, was quite a distance from a larger town such as Brenham, or even nearby Bellville, where I eventually attended four years of high school.  Once I began elementary school,
it required a long bus ride of at least one hour to and from school.  And, an even longer ride once I began high school, which was almost 30 more miles away.

Art classes were not in the family budget,
nor was the distance for me to attend one even remotely considered.

Without repeating the whole story, I think you get the idea.  

So, now....each day as I fill my hours wondering what exactly I might want to do next, 

I often find myself tearing up.  I have so many things in my heart, crying to come out.

I am still that little girl who cried when she was told she couldn't take art lessons.  I have been waiting so many years to learn what making my kind of art really feels like.

I hope that where ever you are today, you are making the art you have longed to make.

Maybe I sound like a broken record.  Maybe I am writing to you, as you wonder why am I even trying to do this.  Make art.  Who am I to think I can do it? 

I just know that I never gave up.  I always kept looking and searching.
And, one day, it just happened.  

I found a small peek into what I would be doing full time...just about 5 years ago.

I wish for you that all those dreams you have held deep inside your heart,
do come true.
And, that your ♥ is filled today and every day after this one.
Filled with art.
P.S. I hope the top picture helped answer your request Margo....thanks for asking =)

diane

xoxox