"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
I’ve been looking at a blank page of my text editor for a while before starting this post, which happens to be my very first blog and my very first attempt to be consistent in journaling.
Because everything is new and fresh I have a feeling that I’m blogging in total obscurity and it’s like floating in open space. A serene feeling.
I thought I would share a little story about discovering my inner artist and why I’ve decided to dive into it.
I have no idea how exactly it all started, but as long as I remember myself I couldn’t exist apart from Art. By Art, I mean all its various forms and diversity, like painting flowers with a soft piece of charcoal on a crispy white wall of our summer house or going on a hunt for wild flowers to put them in between the yellow pages of an old poetry book. Painting with oils on glass bottles on a long winter afternoon, filling in endless sketchbooks and albums with paintings in the middle of a boring seminar at the university.
Looking at how my mom has been carrying love for drawing and creating beauty out of nothing made me think that her body somehow squeezed this untiring ‘creative gene’ into my DNA. This audacious fellow grew into my inner guiding light to creativity. No other species creates art, it is something only humans can do! I like this part and I feel guilty when I don’t use my potential.
Like Albert Einstein once said:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It’s the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead - his eyes are closed.”
Painting is my form of meditation, working on details, getting lost in the colorful patterns has been as important for me as remembering my name. When you find your true passion it puts scattered thoughts in all the right places or at least I hope it does :). It quiets the mind and gives you supreme joy. Letting myself paint every day and trying to make a living out of it has balanced my soul and tamed foolish fears that have been growing inside my head over the years.
Yep. Its that simple.
Sometimes we just don’t trust ourselves and choose to pursue somebody else’s dream or try to be something we are not. At some point I just stopped and let my deepest passions burst out of my chest and let it be, grow, evolve and bloom on canvases, wooden boards and napkins from my favorite coffee shops. I let my brush talk, let it dance vigorously allowing myself to forget about judgmental crowd out there while creating my very own universe. There is always someone who tells you that Art isn’t worth the effort and that its time to stop playing Van Gogh. I believe you can be an artist even if you chose not to make living out of it. Getting paid for your paintings isn’t what made you an artist, it’s just a nice reward for the effort.
In silent hours of being along with my paint, brushes, music and ginger cats (the most professional brush thieves ever) I’ve found my sweet spot.
At one point I started thinking about what I would like my artist’s name to be. My whole life I’ve loved the name Eve and secretly associated myself with it. I discovered a new word - Devorè it comes from French and means ‘burnout’, it is a fabric technique mainly used on velvets to create a semi-transparent pattern against more solidly woven fabric, the same way I uncover emotions on a rough watercolor paper to reveal flowing patterns and characters.
I’m grateful for my husband and friends, who believed in me and encouraged me to give it a life.
And that is how Eve Devore was born.
Love, Eve.
“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”