Necessity and reinvention

Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

[1658 R. Franck Northern Memoirs (1694)

In college, I had a hard time deciding which painting or illustration style fit me, I was a creative chameleon. As students we were strongly encouraged to focus on one specific direction and stick to it, diversity in your art or your portfolio and God forbid, no one would associate your name and your art. Truth be told, out of necessity, I have had to refocus and reinvent myself frequently over the years.
I love working in different digital styles, and learning new technology or software, discovering that what I initially stressed over, is actually a good thing. As is the fact that I don't have to decide am I an illustrator or a designer, it means I can integrate both to my advantage.
Recently recommended for a calendar illustration job, the client thought my digital style of illustration was too hard edge, past calendars had been rendered in a painterly style. So I offered to break out my pastels in storage and do some hand drawn samples. They liked what I did, giving me the go ahead to finish.
When traveling across country in 1977, my camera broke halfway to the West Coast. I didn't expect to land in Southern California on an avocado farm with a couple months to kill until leaving for Europe. I thankfully settled into a place of warmth and extraordinary beauty -with no art supplies and limited funds. Out of necessity I started tearing apart brown bags from the supermarket and I bought these same few pastels recently unearthed to document my surroundings...nature + art + necessity and just another random reinvention on the wheel of art and life.