The Importance of Making Things With Your Hands
Regardless of your medium of choice, dreaming something and making it a reality through your hands is the most rewarding act, and also a radical one in today's world. First, it requires slowing down and quiet. If you can't focus and stay still for five minutes, you can't even do the dreaming part. Then, it will take patience, practice, maybe some meandering. It will definitely take trial and error, which makes the result even more satisfying.
Evening By The Shore Art Print
I'm not only talking about drawing or painting. If your thing is ceramics, crochet, or poetry — launch yourself into the clay, the yarn, the paper. If you think you don't have a thing, or that you're just not creative, I'll push back. This is not a competition, or an attempt to break some kind of creative ground that will blow people away. It's only a way to express what's on the inside. If you have thoughts and emotions, you have something to express. Try several mediums. Make ugly or incomprehensible pieces. The only condition is to get your hands dirty.
The connection between the hands and the brain is well researched. Making things enhances connectivity, focus, motor skills, and spatial awareness. It also unburdens your nervous system and helps you process anxiety, sorrow, or excitement. As someone who has always worked with their hands — one project or another — it has helped me tremendously to walk through a world I don't always understand.
Autumn Hills Art Print
Painting has a special resonance for me though. I love the process — the brushes, laying out all my tubes of acrylic, mixing colors, building a landscape or a bouquet or a scene from a blank page, layer after layer, adding shadows and details. It opens a window onto a different world. It quiets my worries and expands my brain.
When I painted "Evening by the Shore," the first layer was pale blue everywhere. I was starting with a plan, thinking about composition, working toward something specific for the shop. But slowly, the brush in my hand takes over — the sky becomes orange, the trees pick up shades of pink, and a figure emerges. I've painted many failed versions of that scene before. It doesn't matter. Every attempt deepens my connection to my own sensitivity, while tuning out the noise around me. A small moment of peace that can change your life.