How War Led To My Creative Breakthrough
Let me paint the scene - It’s November 2023, just a month after a war began raging in my country. I was working as a project manager in a huge corporation.
Be’eri
Oct 2023
Watercolor, Acrylic
Artwork by Miri Smerling
One of those places with chef restaurants for employees, workout studios, monthly staff parties, endless benefits, and a salary to boot.
Yet even with all of these benefits that I “should” want, my heart was not called to the office life.
I felt daily stress from completing projects, all surrounding products that didn’t mean very much to me — especially when people were being killed in Israel and Gaza and hostages were in captivity.
On top of all of that, sirens preparing me for incoming rockets blared on a daily basis - often at times that I attempted to have meetings with international customers or with my team.
I struggled greatly to stay focused. A month or so later, I was laid off from my job. Little did I know it was a blessing in disguise.
So there I was, deep in the job search. Adamant about staying in the tech world, with six years of experience under my belt. I spent days glued to LinkedIn job postings and the news simultaneously, protesting the government every Saturday night in the main intersection of the city.
Chaos surrounded and it was feeling extremely unpredictable. And with it all came the most difficult of feelings. The kind that so many people in our world need to work through, especially those in countries of war.
Café Chillin’
July 2024
Watercolor, Gansai, Acrylic
Artwork by Miri Smerling
Then, like a beacon of light, an English-speaking cohort for the course “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, was offered in my city.
As an art-lover and deeply creative person, I knew that this might be an impactful course to do. Knowing that anytime I did do art, whether painting, writing, or playing my ukulele, I felt immense relief. So I signed up.
Over the course of those three months, I was challenged to push myself into the arts fully. Writing every day, visiting museums and exhibitions, attending concerts (even street performers), and of course weekly meet-ups with our cohort.
The course enabled and encouraged all of us to find the artist within, to get creative using any medium. Most of all, we learned to stop listening to all those voices and judgements that say “I’m not good enough to do this.”
Little by little, I saw that actively living a creative life showed to have way more healing effects than any other therapies I had tried.
Suddenly I felt excited about all of the endless art pieces that I could create.
I began to truly see the world with “artist eyes.” That is to say, I really started noticing the colors in nature, the shadows, the light - the tiny details and perspective of a scene.
I also fell deeply in love with the art store experience, easily spending an hour at the store learning about the different mediums from the shop employees.
And the war waged on, but so did my daily art practices.
I started to see significant improvements in my well-being. It was almost as if every time I picked up a paintbrush, I was instantly transported into my own sacred art world. I got a lot of inspiration from everything around me.
I painted at the beach, at cafes, in parks, on hikes. On days that it all felt too heavy, I let it all out on the page or on the canvas. Art truly became my biggest lifeline and source of peace.
That was just the beginning of what eventually helped me start my own business of my artwork, creating products, selling at markets, and providing creative workshops in the community.
But that, that’s a story for another blog.