What is a heartist?

From my earliest memory, I’ve felt a calling, a tug, a dire need to express love, beauty and faith, through observation, collection and creation in all I see .. and to share that love, with all I hope to know. I still feel it and it’s why I’ve come to realize just what being a heartist is.

As a small girl, whether gathering wilted flowers (to love them back to life) ..  excavating dirt mounds in hopes of finding that special something (that someone special must have lost),  hand stitching patches on my Raggedy Ann doll where my good loving wore through to her stuffing, sifting through discarded remnants, buttons and beads at the local sewing shop and feeling sad that I couldn’t take them ‘all’ home with me, finding the beauty and possibility in broken things, seashells, a mismatched ‘anything’, a torn sheet of paper, a crumpled note and let’s not forget the forgotten, discarded and unrequited objects that were once fondly, proudly loved .. all of these, for me, were the perfect finds ~ and then there were the songs .. writing and singing melodies when a broken or hurting heart could not hear the love in the words any other way or words alone just couldn’t describe what the heart felt .. I found endless possibility in transforming another’s mundane into my masterpiece!

I always knew there was just the thing I would create, just the perfect loving I could give to something that would give it a life, a persona, all it’s own, renewed, repurposed, reshaped and worthy to someone else ~ And I believed that if I gave that ‘something’ that perfect loving, that renewal and repurposing that it would then become a gift of love, healing and renewal for anyone who held it dear and that a little touch of my heart and a little touch of faith would shine through and in that feeling, that purpose. In this .. I have never felt closer to God.

     Of course, I grew up .. but I never grew out of my love for people or my passion for creating beautiful ways to love them.

Some people may confuse this wide range of expression as ‘dabbling’ .. I often received advice along my journey, to ‘choose’ my art, to BE a CERTAIN ‘kind’ of artist .. and if there’s one thing I’m sure of .. I am certain that I have!! .. only I didn’t choose my art ..  my heart chose what my heart knew,  all along.

I am a HEARTIST <3  … simply decided and that of a very certain ‘kind’ (being a kind ‘one’) 

As a heartist all of my passions flourish, coincide and commune ~ I let what I love truly lead me to what I do and I hope that in some small or GREAT way my art can inspire your heart and open your curious eyes to find the heartist within yourself  ..  As everything you do, respresents the heartist in you, the heartist you have always been.

1. creation of beautiful things: the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works, e.g. in painting, music, or writing
2. beautiful objects: beautiful or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity
3. branch of art: a branch or category of art

1. blood-pumping organ: a hollow muscular organ that pumps blood around the body, in humans situated in the center of the chest with its apex directed to the left
2. left side of chest: the area on the front of the human body that corresponds roughly to the position of the heart
3. basis of emotional life: the source and center of emotional life, where the deepest and sincerest feelings are located and a person is most vulnerable to pain