Life Inspired
Seeing Life Creatively
AS ARTISTS WE ARE CONSTANTLY TRYING TO FIND REASONS TO MAKE ART, TO REINVENT WHAT WE’VE DONE THOUSANDS OF TIMES BEFORE, TO MAKE SOMETHING SO FAMILIAR SEEM DIFFERENT IN SOME WAY. We are trying to make the ordinary into something extraordinary. We live our lives chasing those moments that make our heart beat a little harder, or that adrenaline surge that challenges us to push just a little bit longer...or do we?
Have we fallen into a pattern of life that seems like groundhog day, where every day we repeat the motions of what we did the day before, never stepping outside the limits of where we are most comfortable and what we know. We have learned to fear failure and we have learned that playing it safe is often the easiest path to tread. How many times do you tell your kids, stay away from that, don’t jump off of that, don’t climb over there, you might get hurt. How many times do you ask them to stop doing something because it isn’t safe?
IT’S IN OUR NATURE I GUESS, TO PROTECT WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT, EVEN TO THE POINT OF LIMITING OUR BODIES AND MINDS. And with each limitation we set, we allow ourselves to get comfortable, until we don’t, and then we have to set new limits in order to feel comfortable again. Can you see how the pattern might form? Eventually we are telling ourselves something is too hard, or too time consuming, or too dangerous, we might not be able to do it, so we don’t explore, we don’t try, we don’t fail.
Why not try something we think we aren’t good at, just to see if maybe in fact we are good at it? Why not try something a little dangerous once in awhile, and see if maybe it’s not in fact as dangerous or as difficult as we originally perceived? It’s in those thoughts, I’ve realized, I can’t let me own fears stop me from trying things. If I am always comfortable, my heart will never beat faster and I will never be tested to see just how much I can achieve. HOW DO WE FIND INSPIRATION? Let’s try and find out
Your Instructor
Katie Brenkert, of Katie Brenkert Photography, is a lifestyle/documentary photographer living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, 3 kids, puppy, some hermit crabs and a couple of fish. Her photography highlights life as a stay at home mom to her crazy crew because as a hobby photographer, her family is her inspiration and her muse. Although the love for taking pictures started as a passion for documenting, it has over time, morphed into a passion to create art. Kids change every single day and the desire to tell that story is what makes Katie want to pick up her camera. Her work has been published in Birds and Blooms Magazine, included with HGTV, and she has had a photography workshop, Remembering Childhood, featured in the Huffington Post. Katie is a contributing artist with Cavan Images and her work has been published in the marketing material of the humanitarian organization Matthew 25 Ministries.