Calm Water ....

 

As we approach (early) retirement I find myself torn between a longing for peace and tranquility, and wondering if I'll find it all a bit too unexciting?  Obviously all the things on my heart always find their way into my journal eventually, and so this niggling anxiety was bound to make its presence felt sooner or later ....

It started with the blue and yellow paint background, to which I added some simple bits of collage and those V shapes were a rubber stamp.  I always find images of the Buddha very serene and calming, so I think that's why he's there, and that deep teal blue colour just appealed strongly. Perhaps those are islands in my sea?  The ink blots are another rubber stamp.  The page stayed like this for some days until I came back and worked on it again.

At which point my thoughts about boats and calm water/safe harbour came out of my head and down onto the page.  These sputnik shapes are not my usual thing at all, but I like how the strong black jumps again the blue and yellow.  The black was done with a Posca paint marker which really does write over just about anything, with white paint marker on top.

And although the page might even look finished at this stage, I couldn't resist adding to it and fiddling about.  The spiky leaves are also a fine paint pen - I think they're reeds at the water's edge, or something like that?  They just seemed to want to be there.

I also made use of a dark grey paint marker for some of the bubbles (at least I think thats what they are, they don't always tell me) which I really like as a colour.

Somewhere in all this I think I've managed to capture my dilemma between a human desire for excitement and interest, and the wish for a safe harbour at the end of the day.  Don't know the answer to my own question yet until we actually take the plunge and go, but I suspect in the end all of us would like a large amount of peace and quiet punctuated by little oases of happiness and excitement??  I think that's what I probably want anyway.