Featured Mom - Oksana of Lulu Village

Todays featured mom is Oksana of Lulu village. Instead of the regular interview style feature, she chose to write her own piece. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Oksana wrote:

C.G. Jung said that the unfulfilled creativity of parents has a more profound effect on children than anything else. Well, I now believe that boundless creativity of children can re-awaken the creative spirit of parents, even one that slept for 100 years, like Sleeping Beauty. Kids have wonderful spontaneity—an ability to befriend life in the moment and not get carried away into perfection and planning for tomorrow. My own two helped me uncover a tremendous potential within myself: an ability to be curious and excited, to learn new things, to grow, to be inspired, to move easily between mediums and step over stereotypes- all things I thought I could not do!

When I was little, my father and I used to take walks through a wooded area on the way to the grumbling little motorboat he kept trying to fix. The path went under a canopy of old trees, oaks I think, with their overgrown roots; sandy hills covered with needles from the twisted pines; and flowers- tender wildflowers in a multitude of colors. I knew that picking them was useless - they wilted so quickly in the summer heat. I absorbed them with my eyes, inhaled their sweet breath with my whole being.

One day I did pick one, I could not resist its beauty: its reds, violets, even yellows offset by shades of blue. It seemed to breathe in my hands as I wrapped it in a wet handkerchief. It was a bluebell. As soon as I got home I got busy: I drew it out with a pencil and went at it with loads of purple and blue watercolors. I remember that moment viscerally, with every cell of my body- I was the happiest child on earth.


Until, that is, my father came. He looked over my shoulder and said: “That is NOT how it is supposed to look.” He took my brush, rinsed it out in a glass of water, purplish from my own rinsing efforts, and painted right over my bluebell.
His was a gorgeous, life-like rendition of a skilled artist. An engineer by day, a tentative watercolorist in the evenings, that afternoon my father led me into the fog of embarrassment and grief over my little bluebell. The real one, propped up in its little pot of water, was wilting away almost as fast as I was.


The experience was monumental: despite the urgings of family and friends, I did not paint until I was in college, in a foreign country. I did not try watercolors again until a couple of years ago.

Years later, with my children’s creativity as a guiding light, I started to heal. Slowly, my work has acquired its own uniqueness, a quiet soulful aspect I treasure most. I recognize it the way I saw that bluebell, the way I see my children-unique among other bluebells. When my little DaVincis show me their drawings—I look for that unique something: a choice of color, a line, a shape that draws my attention, and then comment; praising everything. I’ve found it is a bit like not praising at all- eventually your opinion is not valued. Find something your inner self responds to (faking is useless, kids are nature’s best lie detectors!) and notice it.

I no longer let anyone “paint over my bluebells”. I encourage everyone I meet to pay attention not to the finished perfection, but to the immediacy and joy of the initial desire to create, that sense of mystery. I become privy to the experience of co-creating with the Universe itself: a powerful river of life flows gently through me. Art, it seems to me, comes to life before I even take my brush--- I merely help it acquire a shape. That shape matters less now, than the authentic impulse behind it.

Joseph Campbell said: "Follow your bliss."
Follow yours and never stop!

See author’s work at
www.luluvillage.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luluvillage/


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