Why Women Should Paint

Why Women Should Paint

From Judi Morales Gibson of Artista Creative Safaris
Seven reasons why every woman should express herself through art.

Even if you haven't painted since grade school, your artistic expression longs to be released, says Judi Morales Gibson, who is the Guest Services Manager for Artista Creative Safaris for Women (view website) as well as being a painter, surfer, Mehndi Body Artist, event planner, jewelry designer, seamstress, dancer, and Dexter's Mom. Here Judi gives seven reasons reasons she believes this so passionately.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 1
Women are aesthetic by nature. A woman will notice the subtle colors of an Anjou pear, and use it as inspiration to redecorate a room. She will buy a bolt of fabric just because the color moves her, and worry about how to use it later. A woman will tear a picture of a garden from a magazine, just to post it on her refrigerator.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 2
Women instinctively recognize and capture beauty, and when given the chance, will express her own intuitive energy. Women recognize and embrace the emotion that beauty ignites, and are drawn to colors based on their emotional needs. It's why they buy yellow flowers to cheer themselves up, or add a bright scarf to an outfit.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 3
Women can communicate and express themselves without words. A mother expresses love with bedtime lullaby, a grandmother expresses her confidence by wearing a feathered purple hat, and a toddler expresses her fearlessness by coloring on the living-room wall. Even though no words are spoken, her message is clear.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 4
Women naturally have a great sense of color and light, which is why they get to choose the new house color. Not only that, they are fearless about personal expression. Just give them some time, mental space and tools to create, then stand back. Women are more willing to break the rules set by the standard of the day. They have a natural instinct for doing things differently, which is why they can make a Halloween costume out of a pillow case or turn a farmhouse door into a coffee table.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 5
Women understand the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, the ability to see beauty in things that are imperfect. They stop to admire an intricate rusty gate, the complexity of a darkened pre-storm sky or old chair with paint chipped away, exposing it's history of previous colors. Beauty is everywhere, and women notice it.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 6
As they get older, women become less afraid to act on impulse. A 65-year-old women explains: "At my age, I can be as crazy as I want to be". Amazingly, we are born with that freedom and openly express it in early childhood. Eventually things like peer pressure and the "status quo" stifle it in adolescence. If only we could maintain that freedom throughout our adulthood, just imagine our potential over a lifetime. Women should not have to wait until their sixties to rediscover themselves. It's time to let their creativity run free.

Why Women Should Paint: Reason 7
In the end, women use creative expression to make the world more beautiful. Even simple things like a bowl of green apples on a table or flower pot with sprouting daffodils emotes beauty, which in turn makes the world a happier place. That's perhaps the best reason for women to paint.

What Stops Women from Painting?
So with all this natural instinct, what keeps women from painting? Typically, it's intimidation, fear of failure, and the lack of trust in her own aesthetic. Rigid art styles like figure drawing or still-life painting, force students reproduce an image, which can be difficult and limiting. Thankfully, there are abstract painting styles, which allow artists to freely express themselves, discover their own natural style and essentially 'color outside the lines'.

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