Moving out of your comfort zone can produce rewards beyond your expectations. This pastel drawing is the most recent result of my wife Gretchen's actions to redefine herself as an artist after years as a high tech program manager. I am getting a framed copy for my office wall.
She did pen and ink drawings while in college, but raising a family as a single mother and a late-life career pushed her artistic endeavors off the stage of life for many years.
Moving to Floyd and being exposed to a supportive artistic community encouraged her to study painting again. She began with watercolors, then discovered pastels and that was all it took to unlock her creativity in a big way. She is now painting almost every day.
She has taken a few classes and now does figure painting every Wednesday with a group of Floyd artists who have been painting together for almost twenty years. She is also exhibiting regularly at the Hayloft Gallery.
This would not be happening if she had not been willing to move out of her comfort zone and into an area where she would be putting her talent on display.
It is never easy to put yourself in the public eye, but it can be done and is being done every day by people who never thought they could do it.
One way to make the transition easier is to find people you can trust and who will help you succeed. You want friends who are winning and want you to win too. They recognize that helping other creative people makes for a better game for all concerned.
People who view life as a zero-sum game should be avoided entirely because they view your success as their loss.
Try to find people who share similar goals and view you as an ally on the road to success. They will help you move out of your comfort zone into new challenges and new victories.
Let me know how it goes.







Congressman Boucher has been a good friend to Floyd and intends to continue in that direction. He has been a strong supporter of efforts to achieve sustainable economic growth through tourism and has been very supportive of the Jacksonville Center and 'Round the Mountain, Southwest Virginia's Artisan Network.
People come to Floyd or places like Floyd because they have this dream, you see, of enjoying a simpler and more satisfying lifestyle. The image above seems to capture that idyllic quality.
The first thing you notice about any Tom Phelps pottery display is the teeth. Then when your attention is thoroughly snagged, you notice that he also has cups, bowls, and a host of dinnerware items that are just what you need for your home or for gifts.



Jennifer and Kim gamely manipulated controls and changed lenses in an effort to capture images of the dancers and every few minutes would open the vast doors on the back of the camera and take out a huge sheet of exposed Polaroid film and run up the stairs with it.

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