The Healing of a Creative Spark
The start and ending of a life well-lived (mostly) offered up by a California gal from her adopted home in Costa Rica sharing her Ai generated art as a healing creative spark.
Talent runs rampant in my family. My mother carried a natural ability for creating beauty in her homes and her numerous restaurants. She could effortlessly whip up a delicious meal at a prettily set table replete with her favorite Blue Onion china coupled with antique silver flatware and crystal glassware. Splashes of wildflower petals strewn about. Warmth, love and laughter provided the background. She was the original Martha Stewart.
My sisters were also blessed with the gift of creativity; one had dabbled in painting when someone referred her to a well-known master who offered to mentor and develop her natural abilities. She ran from that offer and ventured into a variety of other entrepreneurial endeavors.
My youngest sister had a talent for writing and photography along with a hilarious sense of humor. She is also a crafty one creating objects of loveliness and shopping secondhand stores to find reusable treasures.
Our wild, adventuresome brother was a poet, a wordsmith, although we did not discover how deep his well until after his passing when a handwritten collection inscribed in a well worn, folded, coffee stained journal surfaced among his things.
I was too much in a hurry; born to go, see, do. As the oldest child fearful only of criticism, my interest in creating art was subdued. Buried. Deep. I prefered travel. Adventure. Curiosity often overrode sensibility.
When packing stuff for the move to Costa Rica in 2005, I had found an old tin of watercolors and a few paintbrushes. For some reason I felt these needed to come with. And in our first year, living in a remote part of the Southern zone surrounded by secondary rain forest above the Golfo Dulce, I attempted to replicate the beauty around us with pigment and water. But it was most frustrating and unsatisfying due to the lack of natural talent and any basic knowledge.
A year later moving from the stunning yet remote Costa Rica surfer town following a terrifying ordeal, we settled in the mountains above the central valley in a canton known as Heredia, aka City of Flowers. It was just before the pandemic hit when I came across those same paints and brushes. Now we had internet…and computer. YouTube! And from the generosity of established artists, I learned to make handmade watercolor journals of brown paper, held together with jute string.
Confidence grew with the ability to learn the basics of how to paint. Subpar as my tools and supplies were I was over the moon that I could at last produce some decent art, as it were!
Watercolor became a passion. An addiction almost. I required more training. Better paints and brushes, real watercolor paper. The universe agreed; I was hired by a talented entrepreneur who hand-makes, non-toxic, rich, vibrant pigments in the USA, to help build her brand and increase sales.
And to accomplish the best writing about these products, I of course needed to paint with them. After falling down the Costa Rican customs rabbit hole (mistaken for makeup per the creator’s cleaver packaging in make-up cases)...there was this sense of self as an artist. Or at least the beginning of one.
Painting became my meditation, spending hours a day absorbing how-to videos, courses and practicing. It was exhilarating. Even my husband who didn’t dole out compliments readily, appreciated my characterized birds.
And then everything stopped. An accident. Trauma. Mountain storm. Lost. Miraculously discovered. Hospital. Home. Back to hospital. COVID was in full throttle. Refused entry to emergency. They would call once a room was available for him. Hours passed. A sleepless night. Repeated. Not so calmly. He was misplaced. No one knew anything. Costaricense friends tried to no avail. Finally…a counselor with the hospital services cared enough to try. Two hours later he called. Crying. “Sorry, doña Rebecca…your husband has passed. Yesterday.”
Months kept me busy in a blur with all the undone things that an unprepared death brings. Never mind in a foreign country. A hoarder’s collection of tools. And far too much stuff. The legal aspect. The document changes. Banks. Etc. Etc. Then grief. Always grief. Finding my way after 40 years of marriage alone. Suddenly.
As time continued, the desire of returning to painting just wasn’t there. Creativity seemingly had vaporized. Instead, movies, a bit of reading. Not interested in working. Taking in a rescued dog, helping the old one cross over. Life continues. But not painting. Sadness. Loss. Grief. Tried to be conscious of not allowing depression to take hold. Less socializing. My own health now under scrutiny. Never mind. It’s been a long, mostly good life.
Then came noise about Ai. Challenged to get my head around the what-what of it all.
Until the discovery of Ai art. And it was then that creativity re-sparked my soul. I was obsessed playing with a wide variety of Ai art generators. Then came understanding LLMs and getting pretty damn good at prompt writing (engineer too lofty for moi).
Testing the various models; listening to podcasts, watching videos…it all brought me out of my quietly diminishing life. I felt healed. Back into doing. From a technology. Go figure.
Don’t comment please on the evils of Ai. It is exactly what I needed to get back to living. And as this is my story, any negativity is not wanted nor welcomed. Moving forward with gratitude and a spark fulfilled by creativity. And technology.