Times are hard. The economy is down. The financial system has gone nuts.  Job rate is low low low. Money has taken a vacation and we don´t know when it´s coming back.
Ablablabla, I guess you´ve seen the news.  Or read the papers. Or simply are still alive at these times.
It seems like one should almost have a guilty conscience about even having a job. How dare you? Someone else could have it and survive!
Well, I thought I could be a little human. I quit my job to give it to somebody else in need. I am fed up with the bad news all the time.
I will be daring and start to be self sufficient.
Yaaaay, everyone party!!!!

….
But wait. How should this even work? I mean, do I have what it takes? Can I make it?
I am 24, I have never done such a thing! Am I crazy? How and why and and and….. STOP IT!!!
I have to be positive about this! There should be nothing diminishing my plans, the very last me myself!
If I have negative thoughts, many others will follow. But it also works the other way around.
This was proved by Suzi Blu and everyone at the Les Petit Academy.
I wrote a blogpost there about my plans.
Next thing I know is that I find a public message to all members by Suzi, telling everyone about my story.
The courage rising in me was unbelievable.  I never knew how much energy one can get out of this support at that phase of life.
All that insecurity that gathered inside of me all of a sudden is gone.
I love and feel loved and what is there more than this astonishing feeling of being appreciated for what one does and is.
All I can say is thank you.
Thank you all out there who support me mentally. Who are there to tell me that everything is ok the way I do it.
This is unbelievable.
Let´s take the journey!

“Hey, you know what? Let´s have an art trade! I pick out one of my pictures and you send me one of yours!”
So that was basically the idea that came up on one of the art chats on Jared´s ning site.
If you know me from facebook, you probably have seen some of his comments on my wall.
He is an artist, a teacher and a philosopher, appart from being very funny and open-hearted.
Check him out here:

http://www.jaredknight.com/
http://twitter.com/jaredknightcom
http://www.youtube.com/user/jaredknightcom
http://www.etsy.com/shop/jaredknight
http://jaredknight.ning.com/ (here you can find his classes!)

So, what about the trade?
I wanted to make a customized illustration, that showed him as my favourite animal: a cat.
It is a mixture between outer appereance (the glasses and the eyecolor) and inner appereance
(the lotusheart and the water lilly).

I found his painting yesterday, stuffed into my mailbox by the mailman. How thoughtful!
It was packed in bubble wrap and as I teared it off, white bits of the canvas showed.
“Holy shit, I ruined it!” I thought, but actually that was part of the painting! (Or Jared? Did I really mess it up? *lol*)

As I flipped it around, I read the name “Internal”, which I think is very suitable, for the colors mostly show black, purple and blue (the latter two being the colors of creativity). Quite interesting also is the fact, that some kind of silhoutte shows on the right, where the color is missing.
(But that is just the human desire to see something in every abstract painting.)
I also like some red points showing through, like something deeper and passionate luring through the darkness.
The composition alltogether is very fiery and driving, like some sandstorm of emotions.

So, what do you think? Comments!!!!