10 days journeying...re-wilding

Wrung out from the night and day just past...tired, but "a good tired."

We gave Joseph's little handmade teardrop trailer to good friends from Chicago, and spent a few precious hours with them last night and this morning, till mid-afternoon when they had to leave...

Sleep eluded me until after 3am, and intense dreams full of portentous images filled the hours before the dawn...

...and so today's journey--this evening's, really--is simply to breathe and rest, and feel the moving air kiss my skin...

...to wander a bit with my camera and my journal, to see what catches my eye.

And my imagination.

I watch the bright jewels of hummingbirds at the feeders, their iridescent feathers catching the late afternoon sun like burnished bronze.  The female has bright obsidian eyes, seemingly too large for her diminutive size.  She has spider-silk clasped in her tiny feet; it catches the sunlight like Rapunzel's golden hair.

What will she do with these sun-struck filaments?  I imagine her weaving them into a magical lining for her nest, impossibly soft.

I love the varied rocks in my tiny Zen garden...they're a varied community that nonetheless seem to fit together.

Swirls and sinuous lines invite imagination in this huge wooden burl...what do you see there?

The cracked safety glass in my shed's door always makes me think of a mask in a web...here, it reflects the trees behind it.

And here are our young friends and the teardrop, ready to start a new life of adventure and love...a most satisfying chapter in the ongoing story.

Change is a constant...times change, seasons change, and we change with them.  Plans change, and we do our best to go with the flow.  That seems to be the message for today...

Finally, standing alone on the back deck, I muse on the fireflies and snowy tree crickets that seem the very essence of a Midwestern summer night--that at least seems unchanged and unchanging--and I feel at home...

Change is in the air...

It's in the air...sometimes we have to fall back and regroup, for our peace of mind, our sanity, our soul.  Things that sounded wonderful at the time--or WERE--grow like kudzu and choke the life out of us, or out of a project.

Many of you know that I'm in the process of simplifying and refocusing...I have been, in ways, for years.  I wrote a similar blog post in September of last year, on nurturing creativity: http://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2014/08/nurturing-creativityor-killing-it.html

Heading in this direction, I no longer take commissions, I no longer paint miniature portraits, I no longer do in-person workshops.  I don't take freelance work for magazines.  The current book will be my last one for an outside publisher.  I've said yes to things that got out of hand, got horribly complex, or weren't what I'd expected.  That will stop.

Yes, even more than it has.  I want to focus on those things that matter most to me.

For the first time in a rather long time, I'm excited about a new class idea...Meaningful Journaling.  (Meaning-full Journaling?)

It may be quite some time before I have time to CREATE it, classes are complex beasts requiring hours of writing, illustration, video, and organization, so please be patient--but I'm aiming in that direction.

And I can't tell you how pleased I am by your initial response!  I'll keep you updated, and clarify more what it will be about, as time goes by.

What it will not be, is a step-by-step, how-to, demo-and-exercise class; I've done that already, in numerous formats.  It will be in-depth, personal, and a sharing of how journaling has changed my life and continues to do so.  I'll include resources and a bibliography of books that support this process--some art-related, some not.  (But as an artist, and knowing how making images can change us in amazing ways, that will be our focus.)


(And yes, this post has been sitting in my draft folder for 6 months, and the idea's been popping around in my brain for much longer...one thing at a time...)