Bruised and Beautiful

Art is in the eye of the beholder. One sees imperfections in art, the other sees bruises that are part of making a beautiful WHOLE work of art.

So often in life we might get remarks and snarls from people that can take us down for a bit.

Same happens in our creative/art world.
The "recovery" can be exactly the same. We have a choice - in our personal life and in our business life.

Let's take artists/creatives as an example:
Quite often we get comments from family, friends and total stranger about our art or creative expressions.
We all love the wonderful comments and compliments!

But some of them can be innocently causing distress, other can be quite unkind. Those comments might knock the wind out of our sails at first.

But then we have a choice:
we can recoil into our shell, or we can use them as fuel to shine.

It happened with me a couple of weeks ago.

Recently 3 of my artworks got juried into the "The Neutral Party" exhibition at the Hive Gallery/Bee Cave Arts Foundation in Lakeway.

They consist of 3 collages I made and digitally transformed them into black, white and grey (the theme of the show is Neutral Party).

When my husband saw them he commented "they are striking. But look a little bruised in these areas."

I felt like I got a bit bruised for something I think is very stunning.
In the immediate reaction I had only heard "they look a little bruised in these areas."
I didn't acknowledge the "they are striking" part.

In my slightly bruised state, I defiantly thought "I am going to call these 'Bruised and Beautiful'!"
Almost immediately I started writing.

I recognized that it expresses what I had been going through internally. And what I see going on with several of my friends.

Thank you, Marvin, for stimulating what needed to be expressed!

This is the story I wrote about being "Bruised and Beautiful":

"Setting out to discover what lights you up, what makes your heart sing with joy, often comes with bumps and challenges that leave bruises.
Some are deep, some are small. They all hurt.

Then there’s the temptation to stay small, to go back into a shell.
But that hurts even more.

For your soul to soar and live with passion, you have to continue your journey.
Bruises become part of traveling the path to more and more joy and passion.

They make you strong.
They make you interesting.
They give you compassion and kindness.

Bruises, successes, the joy you cultivated – they give you a radiance that is truly YOU.
Utterly beautiful YOU."

Let me know if you can relate, please.
I'd love to hear from you HERE.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

I wish you happy creating - and lots of fun turning snarky remarks into fire that spurs on your creativity.

Monika

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(Apologies for not having the comment section right here. The Meta guys made new set-ups for leaving comments.
So I have to take a deep breath, put on a smile and learn how to do it the new way.)

Categories: : inspirational stories