LET GO ....

 

As I've previously mentioned, we are in an in-between stage of our lives, getting ready to leave the home we'd retired to and thought was "forever".  Ahead of us lies a new life and calling, in which many things are as yet unclear.

I needed to write and journal about this strange limbo, so laid down some blue paint and then buffed it off with a wet wipe, before beginning to add collage.

Then more collage, grey shadows and a black outline began to bring the disparate elements together.  Here I was trying to avoid straight lines and keep the outline curvy and soft.

At this point I decided the page was just TOO blue and needed something more, so I used my Neocolour II crayons to introduce lime green, and added even more via collage.  I ended up with this framed page and only a vague idea what I wanted to write on it, so I set it aside until inspiration struck.

And then one day, I just wrote this ... because when things aren't in your hands trusting God for the future is all you can do.

Since then a house has been found for us and the purchase of it is in train.  All we have to do is declutter our present home and get ready to move on when the purchase is all complete.  Its exciting.  It WILL be a challenge for a wheelchair user with limited energy ... but there will be a way.
Rosie

SEARCHING ....

I made this page some weeks ago, when I felt unsettled and uncertain, wondering if there was something I was truly MEANT to do, but not feeling that I'd found it.  I decided that what I had to do was open up my mind and heart to the possibilities that might be out there by doing something new with a journal entry.  So I drew this blob thingy.  I liked it - curved sinuous shapes always please me more than straight lines and boxes.  I gave it a stripey edge and attempted a bit of shading into the corners, but then I got stuck and left it for a while ...

When I came back to it suddenly I was off - with a vision for the orange and yellow centre kind of representing the side of me that's brave, bright and adventurous.  The patterns around the splash of colour represent the neat, obsessively organised side of me that needs to control everything in order to feel safe.  I know what I mean even if it doesn't quitemake sense to you - after all a person can be both of these things at the same time can't they?  The compulsively organised me tends to come to the fore if I feel a bit threatened I think, or insecure in some way.

I'd really like to be the kind of artist who can throw paint around with total abandon, but I'm not, although I do try to be sometimes.  I finished all the doodly drawing (which of course I loved) around the outer edge and the inside was still empty because I didn't know what to write in it, having no answers.  So what I eventually wrote some days later came from the heart - that perhaps in the end it is the journey which matters and not necessarily reaching a goal or destination.  Its taken me quite a long time to be comfortable with that - I'm a person who always wanted to measure progress, tick off goals as I achieved them, so its a huge thing for me to say that the journey itself is enough, and that it doesn't have to lead anywhere but home .....