Some years back it hit me like an avalanche.
I have to paint. I have to paint flowers. And I have to paint in watercolors
This was the end of a three decade long career in Banking and the beginning of a new journey with paint and brush. Tools totally alien to fingers that wielded a pen for so long and ran along the keyboard of a computer.
I had only heard of stuff like this or read about it in books. I did not know that it actually happened to real people in the real world. I sincerely thank God, my family and my friends for indulging me in this new love. Special thanks to my husband and my son for putting up with endless chatter about my work and for letting me believe that every subsequent painting is a masterpiece.
I am now on a new journey. And the journey is the destination.
I dream flowers. I grow flowers. I photograph flowers and I paint flowers. Occasionally I may paint things around those flowers.
Sometimes I also paint trees.
Watercolors allow me to explore a new sense of spontaneity and freedom of expression. The colors are all consuming and create such an aura of beauty and happiness that all else in the world is lost and made not significant.
The artist has the ability and freedom to transcend the realm of reality and create one of her own. A world beyond the normal and the given. It is like a journey into infinity.
I now inhabit this new world.
It is like prayer.
And I love it.
Manju