"Turmoil" Art journal, mixed media
No pretty little landscape today. Instead, kind of a "concept" piece.
September is my favourite month of the year. Glorious weather, my birthday, peaches-corn-tomatoes, a sense of a fresh start. Nonetheless, I was at sixes and sevens today. It could just be that I didn't get enough sleep after my late arrival home yesterday, or that the house is a mess, or a hangover from the mild melancholy I felt yesterday upon leaving Grand Lake behind. Whatever the reason, I was feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, beating up on myself a bit, and trying to talk myself out of it.
I was thinking about all of this as I puttered around the house, unpacking, tidying up. I thought, "I should do my art of the day first, for a change." But my front-porch "studio" was a mess. Last night I had accidentally put down a box of graphite drawing tools upside-down, spilling its contents on the table. I picked up a graphite stick to put it away and instead started scribbling out my frustration in my art journal. I made dark, angry marks. This seemed too harsh; I felt compelled to soften it. So I covered the marks with a piece of rice paper. I thought, "Be kind to yourself" and added greens for growth and renewal, red for love. And on top of all that, the spider -- the creepy, crawly, ugly thing just below the surface (another piece of rice paper) and ready to climb out on days like this.
At the beginning of this year -- my "Year of Living Artfully" -- I read a couple of books that encouraged me. One was The War of Art, which explained the powerful resistance creative people face -- from themselves. (Tell me about it.) The other was Gretchen Rubin's Better Than Before about creating and keeping new good habits. I need to read them again, I think.!