voices

Perhaps the best way not to engage in conversation with those voices? Drawing with my new bamboo pen and ink! And mess with masking fluid and watercolours!
I'm not fooling myself, they'll be back - but this afternoon I went with fun ;)

energy

I got commissioned by my lovely & amazing acupuncturist (if you're local and tempted, contact me for her phone number :D) to design a card she could send as a birthday card to everyone on her client list this year! She left me - beyond - free, all she could give me to go with is 'yin yang' and her favourite colours, black and white :) 

This is the design she chose, and it was incidentally the one that came most from my heart. Tulips are her favourite flowers, and I didn't actually know that :) Payment? The rest of the year treatment for free!! That's a lot of money, but it feels like much more than that - the flow of energy in giving what you love to do in exchange for what you love to get :) An amazing experience!!

relearning

slogging

awesome

My mailbox held an awesome surprise, yesterday afternoon :D 

I received this beautiful collaged mail art card! From someone I didn't know! I love a good mystery almost as much as unexpected artsy mail :)

Of course I had to go look at Jo's blog immediately - she makes the most amazing mixed-media collages, I'll definitely be back :) - to see if I could figure out how she got to me & my address! Hah, and there it was! A conspicuous avatar in the 'Followers' gadget! Mystery solved :) Thank you, Robin, for being liberal with my postal address ;) I love it :)

& thank you Jo, SO much!! Comments on my blogposts are awesome, but this? This is so much more! A blog comment that I can touch and frame! My mailbox was happy, but me? I'm over the moon :D xx

conceptual

Playing, this morning :) Honestly, I was just playing! My pepper & salt shakers on top of an empty tub of body cream, because it was there, as a still life 'scene' :)

Now that it's finished, I see my current recurring 'concept' in it, again. About friendships, expectations, listening and being heard, pedestals and crap. Yup, even when I'm letting go, my conceptual brain subconsciously kicks in. It's a curse, LOL :)

I'm trying to learn to play more - let go. Not because it's infinitely important to play, or to let go, when it comes to what I make. But when I don't - when I hang on to my apparent need to draw and illustrate concepts - more often than not, I don't draw at all. Because I can't find the words for the concept, or I can't decide on the illustration to go along with it. Or because I start and my inner critic gets floor space before he should. That happens less and less, but it still does, occasionally. Especially when I'm digging deep, trying to excavate soul - like when I'm doing a course ;)

But if you didn't know all that, you'd just see salt & pepper shakers on top of an empty tub of body cream. Right?! ;)

space

Yes to space to be yourself. Yes!
And what is weird and alien, really? At the bottom of things? Where it matters, I mean?
I think it's all about - how much space you let yourself take up. I know I could take up more space. Should, even, in some situations. Stand up. Be counted.

How about you? Are you filling all the space you really need, to be you?

beautiful

tribute

I have joined beautiful Shannon to retake her amazing e-course Inside Out. I know that's a Big Word, but it's the truth. This course changed my life in 2010.

I wasn't really anywhere, back then. I always knew I 'liked to draw', but I never did. Because I was up to my neck in muck, crap and other self-imposed restricions keeping me from living - as opposed to existing. Really. I know it sounds dramatic, but it's true. Taking this course opened me up. It was a starting point for everything I've become and accomplished since then. Which is a lot. Still sounding dramatic, I'm well aware. But it's still true.

We've just finished the first week, and I'm... speechless! I always said I wanted to take this course again, and the fact that I'm doing it, now, is synchronicity. I have three words for 2012, and the most important one is FEEL. I want to feel what I do, and what I don't. Where I'm beautiful, and where I'm really not, so much. It's a challenge. I have never really felt my way through anything. I've tried and come close, but it's alien to me, still. This is all - hard to word, and probably worth a blog post all its own if I ever get to it ;) But what's important, what I'm trying to say is...

I thought I was going to do this course to see where I'm going. To find goals, something to dream about, and then make plans. All noble causes in themselves, and who knows, I might even get to that ;) But why I'm really here, now, is to FEEL! I have kept my Art Journal from back then, of course. And I can re-read and re-visit everything I struggled with then. Where I was, what I feared, what I thought my accomplishments and strengths were - and there weren't a lot. It's heartbreaking to read! I feel the desperation that was in almost everything I wrote, apart from being a mamma, pretty much.

And what I'm left with, here and now, is gratitude. Deeply felt. Into my toes and back up again. I have done all that! I'm feeling it! Really deeply realising that - I did all that, I came all this way to be here, where I am. Realising that this is a beautiful place, no matter what's itching at any given time.

Life of course didn't necessarily get easier, but I did. I know, these days, that I'm stronger than I think. That I can find courage to take things on, even when they're scary as hell. And that's a beautiful thing to know. It's a beautiful thing to reconnect with. And an amazing thing to feel!

I can't wait to see what else surfaces. And what I'll draw about it ;) There is always that, since 2010, too ;)

yellow