After all is said and done, after all the running, the being a mom and a wife, all I have our my sketches and my writing. They are who I am and have always been. These boxes of manuscripts, poems & drawings by my desk are not my hobby. They are my art. They are my mark upon the world. My art might not reach many, but I’m not really reaching out here, am I? I’m expressing thoughts, images, emotions and whatever I’m seeing before me in a moment. I used to call it therapy once, but it doesn’t change me. I change it. Maybe it’s something inside me or something outside that I’m writing or drawing. It’s just what I do.
Today after celebrating my youngest’s birthday, I reflected on what she sparked in me nine years ago. In 2002, I started a path to discover who I was way before I had my children, and way before I knew there was a world outside the sheltered world I grew up in.
These stacks of papers are all I have outside of the children, husband, school, running and the traffic outside my door. In the end, if it were just me, it would be these papers at my side. I am composed in them within the outlines of a raccoon and a boy made of stitches who play in a ground of words and color.
That’s me and that’s where I will always play too. Really living is playing and this is my life.
More of my sketches here: https://jacquelinevalencia.wordpress.com/sketchbook-project-2012/
jacqueline valencia 