Moving through Sadness

The past several months have had many unexpected moments of sadness for me. It has been a long time since I’ve had a phase like this. As a child, I was sad often and entering this phase has brought me back to some of those darker moments within myself.

When I paint, I enjoy expressing things that bring others happiness. I’ve struggled with how I can express creatively from a place of sadness and still achieve something that brings joy and healing to others. As I’ve sat with this desire inside myself, I’ve realized that there is an intense beauty in sadness. If I can sit with the emotion and think forward to moments where the sadness is gone I can express creatively the feeling I want to move toward. So, while I may start placing an expression of the sadness on the canvas I can think about the movement towards a better place and let the expression provide me internal healing. And, hopefully this same gift for the viewer.

The truth is so many of us are fighting our own internal emotional battles. We can relate to each other when we express true emotion. It is so easy to present an image to others that you are ok even when you are not. There is a beauty in connecting with another person in their pain. The ability to practice empathy is a gift to the giver as well as the receiver.

This piece, Tears in the Night Sky, comes from the moments in the evening when I feel sadness and I look to the night sky and strive to let it go.