The Optimism of Color

By: Linda Joyce Ott

Mar 14 2023

Tags: a creative life, career art conflict, Life after Death, memoir, memories, quitting work to write

Category: Art, Books, Creativity, e-books, foto, fotographia, Inspiration, Journal Writing, Photography, Photos, print on demand, Writing, zen

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Here’s what it’s about:

After surviving five cardiac arrests in one night following a minor accident, I vow to ditch my career and live the rest of my one and only precious life writing fiction, making photographs, and creating art.

Wanting to make sense of my decades-long frustrating quest for an artistic life and discover how creative work became my salvation, I search my memory cache and sift through five decades of personal journals. Delving deep into my psyche brings to light my attempts to break free and follow my bliss.

On this voyage of self-discovery, I learn how my relentless pursuit of career success and making money, of doing and achieving, repeatedly eclipsed my cherished creative dreams. Along the way, I explore the source of my ambition, my chronic anxieties, and my habitual coping mechanisms.

In my memoir I share my thought processes, and struggles to become an artist. I reveal the rollercoaster highs and lows, the joys and fears, the successes and failures that represent my life as a passionate, restless, constantly re-evaluating artist.

My memoir, I AM – My Journey To A Creative Life, illustrated with full-color images of my art, is available from Amazon as a printed paperback and hardcover book and as a Kindle eBook. The eBook is also available from Smashwords.

Please feel free to share and re-blog this post. Thank you, Linda

To See More of My Photos and Art

Check out my website, my YouTube channel & my Photo Art Portfolios at MagCloud.

Selected works now for sale through Saatchi Art

My Optimism of Color Blog

Every Tuesday and Friday, I post a photo or piece of art that I’ve created that reflects what I call the Optimism of Color. Through vibrant colors and bold visceral forms, these works shout out my joy at being alive, and my good fortune at being able to continue to make art after surviving five cardiac arrests in 2011.

Each of the images I post brings a smile to my face. I hope they bring you similar joy and laughter through the Optimism of Color.

All photos © Linda Joyce Ott 2023

Links may be used provided that credit is given to optimismofcolor.com.