A new year, a full cup

 

                                                                       

                                                                             One full cup  

                                                                  oil and cold wax on canvas

                                                                                    9x12

I've spent the past week reading a lot of writing I have done over the years. I was struck by the flow of language and my response to living and making that I was engaged in.  What is most interesting about looking back and reading and feeing again what I was expressing - is how everything changes ...life happens.  It seems that the depths become deeper, the findings become memories or are forgotten and somehow the seat from where I sit and see and think and feel still seems to be me, but even more so as time goes on.....

Sometimes my experience  is changing on paper or canvas in paint. 

Sometimes it is changing as good ideas come to plant seeds that grow me in new ways. 

And sometimes it seems down right surprising that a sense of self that was so curious and joyous and courageous can be blanketed over or even cracked by life's experiences once again...

amazing......

So, here I am, again. Sitting at a keyboard, preparing to put something into words in relation to this creative process I continue to move with and be moved by. I was curious to read the AI search for this writer part of me, it made me want to read what this woman was living with and expressing. I can't even remember the name of the other place I was writing from. Two blog spots and one other - oh yes...Wordpress. That one was called woman happy to be painting and musing. My last post there was in 2018. Yep. That's me. Even through the most challenging experiences of this year I was amazed by all the layers, all the feelings of being a human being woman. WOW. And honestly I am not much of a reader. I like books with pictures. Paintings. Collage. Color.

How many times can one be taken apart -- to find, once again, what is still truer about really being --about being oneself....in relation to what seems to be indescribable, ever changing and ever present....

Let's see if I can finish this with some kind of intention ....where do I want this to lead ? 

How do I want this to feel?

Am I committed to writing and how often?

I don't know. I'm quietly reconnecting with my creative process with an openness that I have not experienced before - it's like I am beginning a new relationship with myself, and in relation to what I create with and maybe even, for.

 I'm also experiencing less comparing how others do this. It's almost like what I imagine freedom to be.

I'm quieter about naming this ...there is a new trust that carries less of the excitement of earlier years when I was amazed to put any of this into words as well as into paint. And I still am in awe of the process of living, of being myself. I think that's life. How can it not be this way no matter what is happening? There is a gift here and we get to unwrap it ourselves in the midst of the whole nine yards of the world. 

My intention is for trusting the depth of feeling I carry within me to receive and the natural response to share the beauty it reveals.

All goodness is wished from here for you in our world as we begin 2026.

always more than i could know

process painting has lead me beyond my ideas of anything.
i thought it was not to be shown.
it was a rule i kept and became one that kept me.

but the point is to paint, letting go of the need to show it.
this allowed me to go deeper, to let my self express.

what is painted, is often universal, bigger than my small me.
i'm glad for that.
i'm glad to show it.

the door is open

I don’t know where this is going.

I don’t know what this is about.

I want to put it - my experience - on hold, 

to see it,

to know it,

to judge it,

once and for all.

is it good?

is it beautiful?

is it wrong?

is it of value?

And it keeps moving.

Life brings gifts 

And there is fear.

There is mistrust. 

There is anger.

There is such a need to control.

So I paint.

I let the feelings have a form

Snakes

Little openings 

Blood

Knives

Dark beings coming out from under the bed.

Like that.

Letting it be like that.

Letting it (what is it?)

Letting all of this life I am living have a form.

I keep painting,

Feeling the energy move,

Feeling the mind want to know,

the door remains open,

Endlessly open

to life itself.

to my life.

And 

There is a knowing of something true.

From a true place

Awareness knows

Here is kindness

Here is care

and 

Here is wonder.

Here is wonder not to know

And wonder to know that I don’t know

And that I feel much

And I paint

And sometimes I call it courage.

Nothing 

good or bad 

really wants to stay

Because of this open door.

It welcomes everything to be felt

And to pass through. 

I like this word AND

It is an endless invitation of welcome.

I paint and I write, today.

I am encouraged by someone who loves me,

sometimes more than I can love myself,

to do so.

dear reader, 

sister or brother,

may you too, engage fully in and with your life today,

may it pass smoothly, through and through, your open heart!