When you feel it all the time, It can overwhelm you. Emotions can be seen as a gift but also a curse, depending on how you frame your experience, your point of view, and how you choose to see the world. 

I see our ability to feel and sense as a gift. When I see and feel the beauty and wonder of the landscape, when the passion for someone I love overtakes me. I can feel it in every cell of my body. When the tenderness and kindness of a fellow being are so comforting and encouraging, I thank God for the ability to feel the positivity of it all. But when the heart breaks, loss, rejection and fear come, or even the overwhelming of all the positive emotions and opportunities becomes too much, too soon, too fast… Then, I sometimes wish, for at least a second, that I couldn’t or wouldn’t feel. 

I don’t think great art can be created without emotion. Great art evokes emotion! A criterion for choosing an image from the landscape, setting up a still life, or choosing a photograph is that it stirs emotion in me. 

I know that people see it as a compliment when they comment, “It looks like a photograph!”, and as I want to be able to render an image that way as a master painter, that is not my goal. (But I will graciously take the compliment as it comes from a well-intended heart). The last step in my creative process is to learn the emotions the viewer of my art is experiencing. Not for judging, for everyone has a unique way of experiencing art, but for possibly learning how my choosing, feeling, and creating the particular piece of art translates into another.

How do you feel these days? I hope that your difficult days will be accepted with kindness towards yourself and your Creator. It is the price we pay for feeling the Wonder and Beauty of life. Know that you are loved and accepted for all that you are.

Your fellow – very Emotional human, Kerstin Maxwell.