Tag: imagination

courage, Creativity, Discovery

Color Outside The Lines

by Erika K Rothwell4 Comments on Color Outside The Lines
Color Outside The Lines

“Do one thing everyday that scares you.”  Eleanor Roosevelt 

Challenge your boundaries, allow them to stretch your status quo, courageously step out of bounds at times even if not within your comfort zone and expand your creative horizons.  Protecting what we have always been, doing what we have always done will bring us the results we have already received.

Perhaps our past experiences, fears and expectations of others and ourselves have darkened the outlines of our potential, holding us back.  Sadly, we may hide behind walls containing our gifts neglecting the work that defines our unique contribution to this world.

Follow the lead of a child where lines don’t seem to exist, only possibilities.  Flawless work is not the ultimate goal and individual expression comes naturally as they move freely and fluidly through their creative process.

Through years of setting up borders and boundaries for ourselves, we unknowingly create an outline of our envisioned lives hardened with continuous and tedious strokes keeping us functioning safely within the lines.  Over time, after producing generic pictures colored within the lines of our own making with repetitive skill, it’s no wonder that creative inspiration often fades away.

Don’t let your self-imposed limitations close you in.  Allow your creative imagination the expanse of an entire coloring page of life, rendering your authentic self in your artistic expression, as you relearn to color outside the lines.

© Erika K Rothwell

P.S. I love you all.

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Creativity, inspiration

Hopelessly Creative

by Erika K Rothwell2 Comments on Hopelessly Creative
Hopelessly Creative

It exists in all of us, whether initially a flicker or a flame, creativity eventually asks for engagement.   Art is born not only in painful moments of life’s unexpected and uncontrollable events, but also in the peaceful serene entrance of morning when an invitation is presented to begin a new day with the most playful of heart.

My wish to capture the sunrise this morning as a photograph was not granted as I was traveling on the highway.  I could only gape at its beauty and imbed the picture in my memory. Difficult as it was to keep my attention on the road, mesmerized by the half crescent shape of the bright orange globe peeking out from the horizon, I turned my thoughts to the inspiration from nature once again.

Further down the road where the sun’s rays had not yet touched, a heavy ethereal mist was floating above the red river and evoked my fantastical imagination of a world where mystical delights swirl around each and every one of us playfully invoking a powerful urge and desire to create art from the inspiration of tiny water droplets suspended in air.

For me, the mist represents a lightness of heart that floats above the harsh realities of a mundane existence or the senseless casualties of loved ones.  As with atmospheric changes, the heaviness of life can be transformed into featherlight peace.  Once again my sense of purpose has been reestablished and confirmed.

As I was elevated from a mechanical state of tending to daily cares to one of sublime happiness, a magical gift was received again from above.  A place created by a societal and collective imagination, but also quite possibly a place revealed to us in tiny glimpses of unimagined beauty upon daybreak in nature’s masterpieces.

Appreciation of these slivers of magnificence can fan and fuel the burning desire to bring forth our own creative beauty deepening our relationship with the creator of all.

© Erika K Rothwell

Read by Erika K Rothwell
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