Tag: painting

Accepted By You

Jennifred Jones

Do you accept yourself? Are you accepted by you?

No large painting or detailed sewing project is completed in one day. It takes time and contemplation. It’s an ongoing process with much effort involved.

It’s the same with us. We won’t be where we want to be in one day. Don’t give up because the process takes time – that’s why it’s called a process. It takes time, effort and energy.

We’re not a drive-through delivery. We’re more the slow-cooker.

Be patient with yourself. Allow yourself time to learn new things, to grow and develop. Time will not speed up or slow down.

Think of all the things we like that take time to be the best: sauerkraut, sourdough bread, pickles, marinades, wines, curing time for concrete, paint finishes, molten glass and metals to cool, bird eggs to hatch, water to boil, green beans to can, clothes to dry, packages to arrive, oceans to cross, fish to catch, flowers to grow…

We humans are the most complex of God’s creation, and he said were his best work. Why do we think we are unacceptable and slow and clumsy. We are not living a futile life. It is a valuable life. Accept this about yourself. I am an unfinished person, on a journey, hoping to be the right kind of person for where I am. With God’s help I will achieve what is in store for me. I will be at peace with myself, not get upset with myself and in the meantime help others where I can.

Will you accept yourself today?

REMAKE BEAUTY

Jennifred Jones

My backyard is filled with flowers, many are perennials designed to come up again so I don’t have to replant them every year.

So many colors and plant sizes and shapes, mixed together with my potteries and souvenirs from hiking expeditions; they all blend into a beautiful patchwork quilt of color and texture that give me such delight to look at, to touch and to share with others.

Anticipating an upcoming move, I am thinking how I will miss all this loveliness, remembering all the places I’ve been, all the people who have shared plants with me, wondering how much space I might have at my new home, and then what to grab and take along!

Generally, I have discovered when people move out, the new residents have different gardening tastes than I do, and often the garden areas are mowed over or converted into another type space.

That thought is tough, but ….. WAIT!!!

I will have a new palate to paint from, new plants to choose, new dirt to turn over and begin to make beauty all over again.

I won’t be giving anything up. That painting is finished, it added to my portfolio of gardening experience, and now is time to begin another painting.

I will remake my beauty again…another place!

Do you need to remake your own beauty somewhere today?

Where? How? Just begin!

Art

Jennifred Jones

We all have art in us. We are all craftsmen, artsmen, artists, if you will, of one or many things.

We all have a desire, a bent to make or do something. There is something that peaks our interest…working with numbers, working with fabric, wood, metal, designing roads and cities, buildings, designing computers and software; working on cars, assembling items, organization of anything. I believe it is an art to know how to clean and decorate a home!

There are a myriad of types of art besides drawing, painting, or sculpting.

Our art…your art, is needful.

I grew up thinking ‘art’ was only for a chosen few that were crafty, and really crafty didn’t ‘qualify’ as art back then. Art was Rembrandt and Michelangelo and Picasso and Renoir.

Art was something beautiful that others could make but you could not. It was made by people you did not know and never would.

Artists were poor, yet driven, and in their time were thought a bit odd and eccentric, but later on their work was magnified and they were seen in a different light.

The challenge is to discover what our art is and to get in the groove and play it.

Our art will be something we are good at, or would like to become good at, it is something we look forward to doing and gives us pleasure as we work on it –awaiting the finished result.

If it is a drudgery to do or even think about doing, it probably isn’t your art, it is someone else’s.

Never fear, you have your own good skills to develop and share with others. Yours will be different but it will be yours, uniquely yours.

Erwin McManus said, “Don’t be the best imitation of someone else’s talent.”

Wouldn’t the world be uninteresting if everyone’s art looked the same?

What makes genuine art so very costly is that it is irreproducible. It did not come off an assembly line; it is different every time.

What is your art?