Starting Point

The following was written by Mak SIlvano, our bookkeeper and an incredible artist. She has been teaching art classes for the women in our care for a few years now, and was asked to share her experience...

When we started our class, each of the lovely women in our care were in a different level of abilities. Some were already advanced in terms of skills and techniques but haven’t realized that yet. Some were skeptical about joining the class, saying that they don’t have talent or are not good at anything in the arts. Some just wanted to try it out first and see if they will like it. And some wanted to rekindle their “forgotten talent”.

We decided to create some common ground. We need to unlearn everything we knew and all together start from the same point, figuratively and literally. This helped them a lot in acknowledging what they do not know and an opportunity to learn something new. It built respect and trust not only on their own abilities, but also with the abilities of their co-artist (we made sure that we call ourselves an artist). And when they believe in what they can do, they cultivate confidence within themselves and in others. And this confidence had helped them to be the world changer that they are today.

Here are some of the artist’ testimonies:

“I have discovered my skills in painting which I never knew that I can do. It’s not perfect, but I can say that I can pull off some art to share as prophetic and inspirational. Art class helped me to be true to myself and not wanting my work to always be perfect, but rather, to love and appreciate every outcome of it because I put effort into it. At first, I am always shy because of the thought that my art is not as good as the others. Even if I leave this place, I will bring the things that I learned wherever I go and will share it as well with others.” -M

“Art helps me to relax my mind because doing it helped me to focus on something. I also learned to see the value of my work. I always thought that I’m not good in arts, that my skills were bad. But, then I realized that we all have our unique way in executing our arts and everything that we are doing is beautiful. I keep getting better. I have also learned to appreciate every artwork, to love my own creation and to be patient with myself.” -P

“It is important to be patient whenever I do my arts, to trust without doubting my own abilities.”- C