An artist’s life is like this.
As with parenting.
Absolute joy, tinged with blue.
It’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.
There’s the pure high. The moment something just works on the canvas, or when your child says something that splits your heart open in the best way. These moments are raw, honest, unforgettable. They keep you going. They remind you why you show up, even when it’s hard.
But just underneath? There’s always a shade of blue.
The part of you that wonders if you’re doing enough. The mess you can’t tidy. The doubt you can’t shake. The silence between the big moments.
Painting, like parenting, holds both.
The euphoria and the ache.
The triumph and the tenderness.
It’s not always obvious from the outside. People see the finished artwork or the smiling photo and assume it's all joy. But they don’t see the nights spent working through self-doubt. The second guesses. The quiet grief of knowing your kids will grow away from you, as they should.
And yet I wouldn’t trade it.
Because the blue isn’t a flaw.
It’s part of the whole.
It adds depth. It adds truth. It makes the joy mean something.
If everything was easy, polished, and wrapped up in a bow, what would we learn? How would we grow? What stories would we have to tell?
There’s a Japanese term, mono no aware, that refers to the bittersweet awareness of life’s impermanence. A cherry blossom is more beautiful because we know it will fall. A moment hits deeper because we know we can’t hold it.
Maybe that’s the artist’s burden and the gift.
To feel all of it.
To translate it.
To let it live on a surface, even just for a while.