I love Einstein! In fact I admire his tenacity so much that he is one of my top picks for people from history who have inspired me.   I painted this portrait of him in my quest to create portraits of people who have motivated me to move out of my stagnancy into striving towards my passions.  Why did I paint it like this?  LOL, well, it shows you how warped my brain is LOL.   The short version is because I create in an unstructured unplanned way.  As I meditated on the lessons his life spoke to me, I sort of just lost myself in whatever emotion passed through me.  But as I focused on his face, I began to feel the labor intensify to try to be accurate and perfect, and immediately my response was to get frustrated with feelings of perfectionism and fears of failing.  So I shifted how I was painting.  I didn’t want to be perfect, I just wanted to be expressive, so why was I getting tripped up in the first place? I lost my stream of inspiration so I made a quick move to grasp my original intent.  I laid down my brush and grabbed purple paints and started squeezing them on the giant canvas (approx. 4’x4′).  I did this fast and furiously, intending to eliminate the entire thing as I slashed through it. As I started painting with my hands  I began to feel the emotions rushing through me. I purged my sense of self judgement and after intending to go completely abstract, something inside of me stopped and I pulled back from painting.  I went and washed my hands and made a cup of tea and left it for the day, wondering if I would ever complete it.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I revisited the painting that I discovered Einstein’s eye peeking out at me through all that abstraction, and I realized I wanted to bring him back.  The only recognizable part was his blurred eye. Einstein would never give up once he had a gut instinct about something and I was not going to give up either! I conquered my stagnation!  Inspired by Einstein, I refused to throw up a white flag.  The only surrendering I was going to do was to surrender the thought to quit!

Here are a few Albert Einstein Quotes.

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

“Life is like a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving.”

Einstein had a learning disability.  At least that’s what the world of academia said about him. But he saw the world unconventionally and I am so glad he never bought into the going standard of accepted intelligence.  Who can measure such a thing as the potential of a mind anyway?  The education system if used improperly can cater to people who learn by only certain methods, leaving others to be labeled as “less than”.  But we are each of us unique and constantly evolving, how can that be measured?

I thank God Einstein was tenacious throughout his life, and when faced with all kinds of criticism, he persevered with his theory even when he was the only one who could see and believe what he knew in his heart to be true.  Conventional physicists had stagnated and accepted theories as fact and that was something Einstein refused to do.  He would not accept stagnation in science or in himself. His passionate drive was enough to drive him forward against the tide of popular belief.  He also surrounded himself with others who were willing to go to great lengths to boldly try to help him prove what no one on the planet knew yet.

I believe we all have a little genius in us, those moments when we just know what we know.  So often we give up before we have any proof.  Others doubt us, and we then doubt ourselves.  There is no better moment then this moment in time to reach for fulfilling those theories deep in our hearts that we want to prove.  Who knows what undiscovered talents each of us possesses?  So goodbye to rigid thinking that does not serve to inspire hope!  With a lot of rewarding hard work, lets go for our personal genius!

The Sarah Hale Folger Project seeks to inspire greatness in humanity by sharing inspiring stories with the world. Please contact me here on my blog or through my website at http://www.SarahHaleFolger.com

Sarah Hale Folger is a Creative Consultant, Blogger, Artist & Singer. PLEASE make sure to subscribe to my blog today so you never miss the next thing happening in the world the way I see it! Please feel free to comment, share and subscribe to my blog!!! Thanks!!