What Would I Do If I Couldn't Be a Writer?

In My Studio ©Mary Montague Sikes

This year, I am participating in a Blog Challenge for Marketing by Romance Writers, and this week's topic is what I would do if I couldn't write. That one is easy for me because I have always been both a writer and an artist. Without writing, which I can't imagine, I would devote full-time to painting.

The images inside my head would dance out triumphantly onto canvasses everywhere. My studio is full of blank and unfinished canvasses. That would be the case no more. I would experiment to my heart's content and sometimes race out into the world to paint en plein air.

Some days, I would pull out my hammer and chisel and sculpt away. After all, sculpture was one of my first loves in art. Channeling Henry Moore, I built up large sculptures with Keene's cement, soon finding they were too heavy to move without help. I thrived in the College of William and Mary studio setting under the instruction of my teacher and mentor, Carl Roseburg.

"Mother and Child" ©Mary Montague Sikes

My sculptures ©Mary Montague Sikes

Because of the difficulty of transporting my work and the length of time it took to create each piece, I gave up sculpture in favor of painting. I still love the three-dimensional, so many of my paintings are mixed-media with surface texture added.

Studio Paintings Unfinished ©Mary Montague Sikes

Like written stories, the images always dance through my mind. I long to fill the blank canvasses and the empty cradled boards with more of my fantasies and journeys of the imagination.