Journal Peeks and Transitions
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When I'm painting in my studio, one of the things I always do is spread any extra color into my journals or onto blank canvases or paper.
This uses up the paint while also letting me begin the layers of color that I so love on a background and painting. It also keeps me moving my brush and color in a fresh, fun way. I can experiment on the extra pages and be really free with how I lay down marks, tapping in again and again to that feeling of spontaneous expression, and bringing that back into pieces that are further along.
The more I tap into it, the deeper that feeling moves into my cells... and the more likely it becomes that I can access it in those trickier moments of creating and living.
And really, that's what all of this is about... learning at the easel how to navigate this vessel of me in life.
The painting-in-progress at the top of the page began as one of those extra-paint canvas boards. I laid down all sorts of color on it, from many days in the studio, before my trip to Sedona.
I'm still in a state of transition & integration from the charge and connection I felt on this trip, so it's not too surprising that a little bit of Sedona showed up on the canvas, right next to a whole lot of my creative spirit.
The journal pages were all created in Arizona.
The last one was particularly special, because I lost complete sense of time when painting it, and I desperately needed to remember how that felt.
When I sat down and began, there were like 30 people behind me, walking around this beautiful space on the rocks. When I was finished - or rather, when whatever needed to move through me at the twist in that river was finished - I snapped back into my context, turned around, and everyone was gone, except two of my dear artist friends who stayed behind.
The sun was setting and we sat and soaked it up, talking of miracle and truth, in the ways women do when their hearts are open and full.
Really, this feeling of transition inside of me began there...
in those moments when I was just being present, in myself, living, seeing and sharing creatively, surrendering to the nature of things around and within me, right where I was at.
Perhaps, it's not a transition at all, but a deeper affirmation, recognized in my cells, to experience myself, my people and this world more intimately... slower, truer, fuller.