Are You Making "The Arts" a Part of Your Life?

Did you know that the music students at DU put on practice performances, many of them for free? An artist friend of mine said that there is nothing like hearing this wonderful music first hand. She said there were opera singers normally affiliated with The Met that were guest singers. Have you seen the latest art exhibit at the Denver Art Museum or visited a local gallery? When was the last time you allowed time for yourself to sit down and draw or paint? Life gets so busy that time slips away and we're so exhausted by the end of the day.



When I was teaching school I put many hours into planning and preparing materials to make everyday the best it could be. Then I would collapse at the end of the day. When time permitted, I would do a bulletin board and I found I would spent an exorbitant amount of time on the silly thing. It always made me feel really good to be "artistic" but what this really told me was that I was not getting enough of my own art "scheduled" into each week. I knew that working on my watercolors always left me with a feeling of accomplishment but it wouldn't happen unless I purposely set time aside each week for painting. One of my students and his wife did that for each other one evening a week. On Wednesday, he would watch their son for his wife and on Thursday, he would come to drawing class while she watched their son. Perfect!
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Portrait by Jim (adult)