I recently participated in a grueling 3-day tradeshow. It was an experience I am not likely to replicate, but there were a few bright spots.

On the third day, Keanu (hubby) surprised me by purchasing a 10-minute Ho’opono Healing Massage for me. I don’t think of myself as a “massage person”. I don’t have many aches/pains, and honestly feel a bit guilty about receiving massage because I don’t like giving them.

I had been standing on concrete for three days and when asked where my pain was I said my feet and maybe my lower back (I really didn’t have much pain, but they asked).

When I lay down on the table, my right foot cramped, so I asked the masseuse to pull on my toes to make it stop. He proceeded to really DIG into the soles of my feet.

OMG it hurt — a lot. He could tell by all the twitching and ouch sounds I was making, but he didn’t stop. He spent eight of the ten minutes on my feet before doing a tiny bit of massage on my back.

When I sat up I was dizzy. He explained that he had released some energy blockages and that I should drink plenty of water the rest of the day.

An hour later I met with one of my new students, Emma Kupu Mitchell. Emma is a Sound Energy Healer who works with crystal bowls and was sharing a booth at the show. She gave me a sample of her work (pure bliss).

The tradeshow wasn’t a great sales venue for me, but I believe I was there for other reasons. I met some wonderful people, both vendors and attendees.

I also realized that with all of the energetic work that goes into my paintings and teaching, it is important that I balance it with some energetic and healing work for myself.

Life is a balancing act. We are all busy juggling our day-to-day life chores on one side of the “teeter-totter”, with the fun things that make our life worth living on the other.

Before I quit my corporate job to become a full-time painter and teacher, I got up early to create art before going to work.

Now that I am a full-time painter/teacher, I seek ways to carve out time to write and illustrate a children’s book.

This is a good thing! Continuing to stretch and grow gives meaning to our lives. It gives us a reason to bring more life force energy into the world. It inspires us to maintain a sense of balance in our lives.

How about you? Does your life feel balanced? Are you feeling mired in your job or life, or are you actively seeking ways to enrich your life?

Teaching Watercolor is one of my “callings”. I think of painting is a metaphor for living life more fully.

Take one of my classes and you will know what I mean.

I’m a bit of a bookworm; reading is one of my passions. I read journals, memoirs, novels, how-to books, self-help books, children’s’ books, cookbooks, etc. You get the picture.

Recently a friend of mine recommended “The Painter” by Peter Heller, so I got it out of the library (love libraries!). It is a wonderfully well-written story about a painter; and I feel compelled to share a few of my favorite passages with you.

“Nobody, not even artists, understood art. What speed has to do with it. How much work it takes, year after year, building the skills, the trust in the process, more work probably than any Olympic athlete ever puts in because it is 24 hours a day, even in dreams, and then when the skills and the trust are in place, the best work usually takes less effort. Usually it comes fast, it comes without thought, it comes like a horse running over you at night. But. Even if people understood this, they don’t understand that sometimes it is not like that at all. Because process has always been: craft, years and years; then faith; then letting go. But now, sometimes the best work is agony. Pieces put together, torn apart, rebuilt. Doubt in everything that has been learned, terrible crisis of faith, the faith that allowed it all to work. Oh God. And even then, through this, if you survive the halting pace and the fever, sometimes you make the best work you have ever made. That is the part none of us understand.”

“The reason people are so moved by art and why artists tend to take it all so seriously is that if they are real and true they come to the painting with everything they know and feel and love, and all the things they don’t know, and some of the things they hope, and they are honest about them all and put them on the canvas. What can be more serious? What more really can be at stake except life itself, which is why maybe artists are always equating the two and driving everybody crazy by insisting that art is life. Well. Cut us some slack. It’s harder work than one might imagine, and riskier, and takes a very special and dear kind of mad person.”

And finally:

“Not everybody can paint”, she said into my ear like a megaphone. “Some people just get to love it. Buy it, treasure it. The way it should be.”

The entire storyline revolves around much more than the painter and his paintings. I wanted to share these passages because the sentiments reflect my thoughts and feelings so much better than I could have written them. Just a little something for you to think about until you can get your copy of "The Painter" from the library.

On a much lighter note, I recently purchased one of my all-time favorite books, "The Little Prince," as a pop-up book.
I Love it!

My painting, “Tumbling Pineapples”, recently won an award in the Hawai`i Watercolor Society’s Members’ Exhibit. You can see the entire exhibit online: http://www.hawaiiwatercolorsociety.org/hws-shows/

Would you like to know a story behind this painting? 

Tumbling Pineapples was started after I had made a quick stop at the Dole Pineapple Plantation on the North Shore of O`ahu.

After taking photos of all the pineapple displays and pineapple  plants on the grounds, I went back to my studio to sketch out my ideas.  Once the drawing was done, I covered the watercolor paper with texture  and paint, and waited for it to dry.

All paintings go through what I call an adolescent stage — a time of angst when things just don’t fit or feel quite “right”. This piece went through its share of growing pains before settling into being the painting it is today.

Tumbling Pineapples was submitted to four exhibits before it was accepted into this one — and then it won an award!

If I had stopped after my first, second, or even third rejections, if I hadn’t kept submitting this painting to different exhibits, it never would have won anything! 

The painting didn’t change during the submission process. The eyes making the selection changed, along with the other images submitted to the exhibit.

Tumbling Pineapples isn’t the only painting in this exhibit with a similar story.

Diane Tunnell’s“Magnificent Iris” painting was thought to be less than successful by her mentors. They encouraged her to enter other paintings, and discouraged her from entering the iris.

Diane took their comments to heart. She adjusted the colors and value structure of her painting. She believed in the value of her painting, submitted it to the show, and won an award.

Let these stories be a lesson to you — persistence pays off!

When we truly believe in our art, we must listen to our inner guidance and continue put it forward to share with others.

We never really know whose heart our art is meant touch.

Keep Your Eye on the PrizeWhen I began to return to my artistic roots, I started with drawing. I used colored pencils to describe my inner world, and that of others (with their permission).

This image is an example of one of those drawings; I called them Energy Essence Portraits. They were personal mandalas that “spoke” to me as I drew. I kept a notebook at my side & recorded words that popped into my head while I drew.

In the beginning, I needed total silence to do these drawings; even music distracted me. This work required my total focus. That is why I would get up at four AM to ensure peace and quiet in the house.

After a year of silent drawing in the wee hours of the morning, my circumstances shifted and necessity conspired with reality to create times when the presence of others while I drew was unavoidable.

Fortunately I had honed my focus by that time and could draw without being distracted by others.

By the time I’d moved to Honolulu in 2000, I realized that my focus had become so strong that I could paint in public. Nowadays I paint at galleries and fairs so people can watch the painting unfold along with me.

Over the years I’ve realized that the more intensely I focus on my painting, the less time I paint at any one time. As a result of focusing so singularly, I am able to accomplish quite a lot in a short amount of time. This allows me to schedule short blocks of time in which to work on a wide variety of projects.

Focus is focus. It doesn’t matter what you focus upon, as long as your attention is aligned with your intention, your focus will be strong and pure.

You can start to hone your focus by setting aside 5–10 minutes at a time, 2–3 times a week, to devote to one task. Choose something you have wanted to do, but haven’t been able to make time for doing. Ideally this task will be one very close to your heart.

Do this task for 5–10 min at a time, 2–3 times a week, for three weeks. I promise you will be amazed at how much you accomplish in those 30–90 minutes of time. Your new-found ability to focus with intention on almost anything will sneak up on you.

The really good news is that focus, once honed, follows you from task to task. Your ability to focus on almost anything is a skill worth learning.

You can read more about focus here: http://dreamheartsmartart.blogspot.ch/