Another Year

So here we are.  Another year has come and gone.  We’re well into the end of January and I have not posted for quite some time.  My new year’s resolution was to cultivate joy.
 

I have been reading Julia Cameron’s The Complete Artist Way (2007) and have found certain gems that have helped me through my times of blocked creativity.  Although I have written and drawn my thoughts since I was about six or seven years old, my hopes and dreams of publishing remain unfulfilled at this point, but as Betsy Lerner has said in her book, The Forest for the Trees (2000) there’s hope for us “late bloomers”.  One beautiful phrase that I read this morning went like this: “It is very important not to become hard.  The artist must always have one skin too few in comparison to other people, so you feel the slightest wind”.  Susha Guppy (Cameron, The Complete Artist Way (2007), pg. 635).

Well, no worries there.  That describes me to a tee!  Cameron talks about the grey days.  The days where one must keep keeping on. I know too well days like that; when my fears and doubts creep in like dampness that chills to the bone creating aches and pains.  I need to do just that. Hang on and stay the course.  Sometimes I’m able to overcome days that discourage or fans one’s fears by taking pencil in hand and draw my way out of the darkness.  Other days I read and escape, or busy myself in the day-to-day tasks: laundry, bookkeeping, something tangible and practical to keep me grounded.  Being thin-skinned can be very difficult at times.  Sometimes the best thing I can do is surround myself with my books and heated oat bags, huddle under soft quilts and blankets and write like my life depended on it, until I find a way back to the positive and find the strength to keep going. 

One of the projects I worked on recently was a contest that I entered for a book cover.  I didn’t win, however I learned a lot and enjoyed the process immensely.  Featured below was my submission.

Skywatch Friday

We were in Southampton the day the tornado touched down in Goderich.  These photographs were taken the night of the storm.  It's hard to believe that in such beauty was the potential for terrible destruction.   The picture below was taken the day after the storm.  The sky was still quite wild and unsettled.

Lost in Transition

This morning after writing in my morning journal and feeling rather frustrated with my life, I donned my snowshoes and headed out for my first walk in the bush this winter.

It is a lovely day, minus 11 degrees C; not too cold for this time of year with the promise of sunshine. I headed out through my back yard onto the property that butts up against my neighbour’s and followed a path that he had groomed with the snowmobile and headed on my way. Only as I launched onto the path, it forked and I took the trail that looked familiar to me and headed further into the bush.

It became clearer as time passed, that I didn’t know where I was going at all. Nothing looked familiar to me. I stopped to take a few pictures of the white blanketed landscape, admired the sunlight glancing through the treetops, and started on my way.

The further I pressed on, the more unfamiliar my surroundings became and I had to admit that for the first time in years on this property, I was getting lost. Yes, me who is more at home in the bush than surrounded by people in a busy metropolis. The further I pressed on, there were more and more trails, forks in the road to choose...which direction would I take, where on earth was I going?

I became thoughtful as I pondered that not only did I find it hard to make a decision on where I was going in the bush, I was lost in my life as well.

I wondered about my decisions over the past few years, the long time marriage I ended, the hurt and anger I felt over disappointments. Just as I kept coming to more forks, more paths that were unfamiliar, I was finding that my life was becoming more and more distant and unfamiliar as well.

Where was I going, and how did I get here? Each trail I took was taking me further and further from home and the familiar...just as my life was doing.

The marriage I ended was familiar and safe...my husband a faithful provider, hard worker. Yes I felt lonely and unhappy but had I chosen the right thing? I found that I had run from my pain, and myself...and now I had run out of steam...I was forced to look at myself and my choices.

What did I want out of life, what was I looking for? I had to admit to myself after taking trail after trail that I was getting further from home and still didn’t know where I was, so I decided to backtrack and follow my tracks. In life, do we get to do that? Do we get second chances or are we doomed to be lost souls wandering around in circles? Do we get to find our way home?

My husband has since remarried and made a new life for himself. I think he is better off. We are now able to talk to each other and deal with the day-to-day parenting challenges and guide my son. We have both grown.

I have become more independent which is what I craved, but I am still lost. Could I have found my way in my marriage? Could I have managed to fulfill my needs had I stayed? These are questions I suppose won’t get answered any time soon.

The further I went along the trails I was following the more I had to finally admit it was time to turn around and follow my tracks home. I was not going to find my way today. This was hard for me to admit to...and I guess the same goes for my life.

At times I feel I did the right thing, and then I feel panic that I didn’t. Whatever the decision, I can’t go back now; I have to keep going forward. The way is unfamiliar to me, and at times really scary. I get very lonely and I’ve lost my family. We have had to re-invent ourselves, no easy task. I have heard that the amount of single people out there now outnumber those that are married. I wonder if marriage is a dying practice.

I was lost in thought my whole journey back and confess I stopped enjoying my walk. My sight was turned inward now and I was missing the scenery around me. Nothing looked familiar to me until I was almost home.

I found when I reached the beginning of my journey that I had actually taken the wrong trail. I took a path that I thought looked like the right one but it was actually the wrong one. Now I’m wondering if I have taken the wrong path in my life as well.

Hindsight is 20-20 as the saying goes. I don’t know. All I can do is keep going and make the best of the choices that I have made, and live my life to the best of my ability. For those of you that are struggling, and we all do, I tip my hat to you, and wish you the very best in whatever you choose and the path you take.

The Lore of the Butterfly

I find butterflies fascinating. I have studied them, collected them, and drawn them. They have been a source of inspiration for poetry and painting. This group of captivating insects is categorized in the order of Lepidoptera. According to the literature, butterflies have been the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphs as much as 3500 years ago) (Wikipedia).
According to Lafcadio Hearn, butterflies have been depicted as an embodiment of a “person’s soul”

These photos were taken with my cell phone while we were in the Butterfly Gardens at Niagara Falls. That was a wonderful experience of light and colour.

Below are examples of sketches of butterflies from text books and dried specimens I’ve collected over the years. They’ve shown up in my paintings and on my art boxes.

These were examples of raised folk art that I designed.

Here is an example of an old cedar box that I keep my butterfly collection in. I have decorated it with a tropical butterfly.

This is my watercolour box, which I treasure. I have decorated it also with a pair of tropical butterflies.

A close up of a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) one of my watercolours.

Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) on Ingres paper.

Monarch (Danaus plexippus) part of a watercolour and acrylic painting.

Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) Original watercolour and acrylic.

Today's Flowers

I am rejoicing in the warm weather we are now experiencing. After a week of rain, my garden is bursting with colour.

The Art of Dying

Last night I hit a deer. Actually, the deer hit me. I was travelling Northbound on Highway 11, coming home from Burlington to visit a friend. It was late at night and all I wanted to do was get home and crawl into bed.

I had fled there for some solace, to cry on a friend’s shoulder about the slow demise of a very difficult and painful relationship. My reverie was shattered when I noticed in my peripheral vision a large deer jump out of a side bank and there it was.

I tried to brake but it was moving at a terrific speed and smashed into my right side, taking out the fender and front headlight, pushing in both doors on the passenger side. I was driving under the speed limit, but that was no help in trying to avert disaster.

It seems indicative, that I am unable to change the trajectory my life path is taking. One thing that living alone forces you to do is reflect. I think about our human longing for fellowship. We crave companionship and dread the idea of being irrevocably alone, or dying alone.

In my job I have watched over and over the path that those are dying take. How it affects each individual and their families. For some it’s a letting go, and a relinquishing of their hopes and dreams, looking back on their lives as a celebration of what has been, others it is a terrible struggle, anguish, pain, even savagery.

I have started reading George Bowering and Jean Baird’s book The Heart Does Break . It is an anthology of grief and mourning, personal poignant accounts of loss. I have been mourning the loss of a relationship that was very important to me.

Like the author, I find that the way to make sense of something is to research it. I seek books, information, knowledge on loneliness and despair, to help me through this time of dying and mourning.

Today was a very difficult day...I spent a lot of it in tears and the only thing I could really accomplish was this drawing of a jack-in-the pulpit plant in one of my gardens.

These elegantly shaped plants are one of my personal favourites. The jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) plant is also called Indian Turnip. They are apparently pollinated by flies.



I have associated this plant with death, and the folklore surrounding them dates back to certain aboriginal tribes that used to chop the corm and mix it in with meat to be left for their enemies. It is the oxalate acid and asparagine in the jack-in-the-pulpit which make it poisonous.

Nesting

I have been pretty quiet these last few weeks. Aside from working, there has not been too much creativity happening, and I have been battling with some personal difficulties.

I am not certain if artists tend to pull away from the mainstream population, or we are just a different kettle of fish but I do know that I struggle with being hypersensitive at times which can be beneficial at “seeing” things a certain way but difficult and painful in other aspects of life.

Aside from all that, I have some wonderful photographs to share of a woodcock nest that my friend and I came across. He actually graciously showed me, and they are wonderful references for future work.

Woodcocks are one of my favourite birds as they are very secretive and unusual in appearance and behaviour.

A woodcock sketch.