Writing Prompt: Facebook Photo

Linking up with Mama Kat this week for her Writing Prompts. I chose to do a couple, so you'll see couple more posts this week on them. Here is the current prompt I chose:

4.) Share the story behind your current Facebook and/or Twitter profile photo.

This is a photo of a painting I started 5 days ago and just finished last night. It is my first painting after years of not painting. I used to be an artist. Even my college degree is in Graphic Design. I loved drawing and painting and it was a very therapeutic past-time for me.

Almost 9 years ago, my car was stolen. Inside my car at the time was my backpack and my portfolio. Both were gone when the car turned up. In the backpack were all of my digital art files from graphics work I had done in school, and my portfolio of course had all of my original paintings and drawings. It was so sad...it felt like someone had literally taken something from me that I could never get back. And really, though if I tried, I could have recreated most of what was in there, I just didn't have the desire...I had literally lost my desire to create. Years of my hard work and pieces that meant something special to me...gone. That moment was pivotal. It was pretty much the moment I dropped my brushes. It would be years before I picked one up again...to truly use my artistic talent. I've dabbled in it on and off since, but never really tried to create anything wonderful...or I would just create little cutesy art stuff with my son, who is as artistically inclined as Mommy once was.

I don't know what sparked me this past week to pick up the brushes and paint again. I was at Wal-Mart picking out some Halloween craft things for Tanner when I saw they sold stretched canvas. Without thinking, I picked up a few of them. After the boys went to bed that night, I pulled out my acrylics and brushes, dusted off the easel and started messing around. My first attempt was pretty quick - created a sunset in less than an hour that was albeit OK, but nothing spectacular. The next night, I tried to mess with it a little more and over the course of the next few nights, it became a completely different sunset. One I'm a little more proud of. Not by any means my best work, but some of my old techniques still have yet to be rediscovered.

I set up my easel and supplies in a nice area in my guest room...so I'll be more inclined to go in there and use it. I'm so glad to open up this part of myself again...eager to see what I will create in the future.