Discovering Hidden Talents

I really didn’t think I could discover much more about my personal abilities at the age of 31. Not to say that 31 is “old” but you’d think that by now I’d uncovered enough about myself to know what I am good at and what I should leave to the experts— apparently I was wrong!

It all started on a quest for wall art when we lived in Costa Rica. We lived in a town called Playa Flamingo which was essentially a couple of lunch places and a beach with a riptide to rival the worst day down at Bondi. 20 minutes down the coast was the main town of Tamarindo, famous with surfers and exuding the Bali-Vibe. Unfortunately, neither of these towns had much in the way of home decor and what was there was very overpriced. So, being semi-unemployed at the time I decided to give painting a crack.

I bought two large canvasses and some cheap paint to kick start my artistic adventure. I then spent the next month procrastinating and ‘researching’ ‘inspo’ on Pinterest before finally realizing that the idea of wasting a $20 canvas was killing my creative flow.

A few weeks later the power went out and with no Netflix or Wifi I was forced into occupying myself without technology. I picked up the paintbrush and a few short hours later I had painted a toucan— and it was a pretty decent looking toucan!

Since then I’ve dabbled with a few more paintings— a llama that looks a bit like a dog, some lemons and a portrait that I ended up scribbling out because I stuffed it. Since moving to Melbourne I have been painting much more and am starting to develop a personal style. I’ve painted Kevin the Koala, which I framed for our living room and did 3 paintings of our favorite alcohol bottles to hang about our vintage bar cart.

Painting has become a wonderful outlet to help manage my stress and let my creativity flow and after some gentle encouragement from some friends at work I have digitized some of prints and started an Etsy store!

I don’t kow if any of the prints will sell, but if they do, it’s some extra change for more paint and maybe some fancy paintbrushes!

So, if you’re reading this and you want to try something new, get out there and do it! Maybe you will uncover something you didn’t know you had!