The Muse at Play in My Life

Tuesday’s mail brought the awaited envelope. The class schedule and supply list for the Zentangle Master Class I will be attending the first week of August in Newport, RI. Maria Thomas, letter artist and co-founder of Zentangle, Inc, addresses every envelope as though it is a commissioned piece of artwork. How special it feels to receive such a gift. How special it must be for the postal people to deliver such gifts.

I am excited and nervous about attending this event. It has recently occurred to me that since attending my first Certified Zentangle Teacher training last October, that I have somehow joined the ranks in being called an artist!? I had never considered myself an artist, thinking this to pompous a title to endear to myself I guess. However, it seems to have come to pass that my life has taken the path known as artist.

Verlin, my beloved life partner and husband has continued to tell me over the past 15 years we have been together that I truly am an artist. It’s just that I can not seem to wrap my head around the term. He explained to me the difference between and artist and a technician is the ability to do improvisation. He says a technician does not create outside of a specific step by step instruction process, and an artist begins with the same basic framework and step by step process but then diverges from there to create something that appears to resemble the beginners’ process but takes on an entire life of its own from there.

It is this process he points out that I do in everything I do; from my massage techniques to my culinary skills. So, it appears the Muse of art has taken over my life recently and is filling me with the need to explore more along the avenues of zentangle art.

So, this week I ordered fine paint brushes & pen nib holders, things I associate with “artists’ tools” to be put to use by my hands before long. I try to contain my excitement and stay in the present moments so as not to miss what is given to me daily by the Muse alive in my life today – I await my departure to Newport with curiosity about being and artist or muse myself.

Today is the new moon/solar eclipse day, a time to explore new possibilities regarding one’s identity in the world at large. So today, I will begin to explore and acknowledge my identity in the world as an artist.