Other than as a way of earning a living, what drives an artist, writer, musician — any creative person — to do what they love doing? Why does an artist paint? Or a writer write?
I know there are many reasons — all as unique as the person(s) behind the art — but here are just [...]
It’s spring, that time of year when we used to clean our houses thoroughly. In fact, when my sisters and I were growing up in our small town, foregoing this yearly ritual was considered a social and cultural taboo. If you weren’t scrubbing and airing-out and waxing and buffing the same week as your neighbors, [...]
I love to write and doodle. So why don’t I do more of it? What am I afraid of? And how do I stop the fears and get going again?
1. Fear of Failure…
Maybe my written thoughts won’t have significance to you, the reader. Do you even wonder the same things I wonder? Or explore [...]
Stories have always inspired me. Perhaps because I was raised with them, in one art form or another…
When I was a young girl, our family often took Sunday drives through the country-side, with the hoped-for goal of buying ice cream cones. A favorite trip was to a small college town twenty miles due west of [...]
by Barbara Hartsook on November 20, 2008 · 2 comments
Our eyes see more than we think…
Yesterday, I said to a friend that, while driving through a small town just south of me, I felt a throwback to an earlier time, perhaps a time of my grandmother – who knows how far back I was thrown for just an instant.
Vintage photo of my maternal grandmother, [...]
I drew and colored my baby announcements. Fall leaves on the front, the insides blank for a few more days until my Terri’s arrival on the 23rd of that October morning. I had washed and folded the spanking-new diapers, laid them on the bassinet’s lower shelf, next to the Carter infant sleepers and tiny wash [...]
by Barbara Hartsook on October 11, 2008 · 8 comments
It smells like the beginning of fall — you know, that smell of half-summer, half fall. Oh, I can’t explain it… but it’s nice. It smells like something new is coming…
So said my twenty-year-old granddaughter Lyssa, as she opened the door to the morning on the way to her college classes for the day. [...]
by Barbara Hartsook on September 22, 2008 · 10 comments
As a little girl, a favorite chore of mine was erasing and washing the chalkboards at the end of each school week. With a big bucket of cold water and a fat sponge, I could wash away all the math problems, diagrammed sentences, drawn-out music scores, lists of spelling words… On Fridays the green slate [...]
by Barbara Hartsook on September 11, 2008 · 20 comments
Do you ever get me time?
Do you ever set aside a calendar day just to become more of who you are?
When I know I have a day with no outside appointments scheduled, nothing looming that screams for my attention — that’s a day I covet and treasure and protect. I can dress in my [...]
by Barbara Hartsook on September 10, 2008 · 7 comments
Seems like August never happened. I know it must have — I had a birthday.
At the end of July I collected a blue ribbon and my paintings that didn’t sell from one art show, and hustled them to another town a few miles east of me for a month-long exhibit. In September I moved the [...]