Recuperating....

Exactly two weeks ago today, I had total hip replacement surgery on my left hip.  I had the right one replaced 4 years ago.  So, the past month of my life has been  a busy 2 weeks of preparation for this surgery and then....the surgery, return home and then recuperating.  So this blog has been totally on the back burner of my mind and my life.

Now I am finally beginning to feel rather like myself and with a successful surgery behind me, that will make my life transform in terms of physical limitations.  I am moving daily into more and more gratitude.  I went into the body shop and had a part replaced and now it is time for self nurturance and healing.  Art has always been a healing, transformative activity for me, and now more than ever, I find myself longing to get back to drawing.  So...

Prior to my surgery I painted background pages in my most recent journal. About a week after surgery I spent time here and there doodling and working randomly on a few of the pages, moving energy and letting artmaking begin to be a part of my daily recuperation schedule.   

So as I doodled two of the  themes that emerged, were  butterflies and mandalas.

                                          Here are some other  pages that I worked on.

 

                               Windows opening to other windows....possibilities, new ways of looking at things

The movement and energy I need for healing, instinctual energy, wild ness contained and focused.  

The image of flowering came up for me during a hypnotherapy session before my surgery, as here it presents itself to me in my journal process.  Reminding me that healing is a growth process and happens naturally, just as the process of drawing unfolds naturally.  So, yes healing happens. 

     Each of these pages, were instinctual, spontaneous drawings, that unfolded as I went back and forth from one to the next and back again.  My mind roaming, my hand moving, and my energy begining to move.  Now a week later, and two weeks exactly from my surgery, I have taken the butterfly and began a new mandala.  Using that symbol as a healing image to help with my transformation to health, vitality, freedom of movement and the ability to walk with ease.  I will post more of how my art and healing merge in the days to come.  

Almost a Month....since Last I posted.

It has been almost a month since I have last posted anything here.  Creatively I continue to flit from art process to art process.  My encaustic painting has for the moment, fallen by the way side, in favor of mixed media collage.  I have been making cards, working in my various journals, doodling around collages and just plain playing with the art process in small doses.

I love to work small on card stock, begining with  a loose watercolor, or cutting up and old watercolor that never really worked.  

Then looking for images that seem to fit the background, adding them and then doodling around them in pen, ink and rubber stamps.

One thing leads to another and I play with them until I am satisfied.  Then I glue them onto a blank card form and walla....art with a purpose, a card to send someone or a small collage to be framed.

Occasionally I fold up one of my watercolor rejects and collage on them as well.

They take on a life of their own, becoming whatever they turn into.

Then I doodle around them as well.  What a wonderful soothing past time

for someone with energy to burn creatively, without worry about product.

I spend many an evening in the studio, chatting with my husband, on the phone or visiting with friends while I do this.  Serious art, NO, but fun, soothing and Happy Making. YES.

Sometimes I stop before I go to far, letting these small card collages be sweet simple 

statements, that can be sent to friends or maybe sold on my etsy shop.

Other times they become enigmatic visual storylines, that please me just for the sake of being.

Or they are just ways to reconfigure images that live in my expanding image bank....

in my journals awaiting more work to be done on them.  So this is what I have been up to this month, as well as being a bit addicted to my facebook mandala page where I have been posting mandala images almost every other day.  

All of this work is simply self soothing, life enhancing, art making, that takes the edges of off my day, and fills me with joy.  

Happy Artmaking to All!

On-going Journal pages....Show and Tell

I haven't been posting much lately,  because I have been trying to focus on doing my taxes in bits and pieces, as well as just starting a new art therapy journaling  group for teenage girls, so my time and energy has been diverted a bit.

However, I still have been working in my on-going mixed media collage journal.  I love how I can sit for 15 minutes or more and embellish. doodle around an image, add words on glue a border piece or new image on and feel the satisfaction of the process.  So here are some pages that have changed, evolved, reformed or are in the process of being birthed in the journal I am putting energy into these days..

So here is a little show and tell just for the sake of it..

I often Dream of Release.......

As I began this journal, I began to collect quotations that spoke to me in the moment, so many of these mixed media collage pieces incorporate the quotes that fit them.

Trusting, trusting the process, trusting life, trusting the universe, trusting myself, seems to be an important musing that comes up again and again.  

The Geography of the Heart III

I love how this process evolves and becomes more than I ever imagined in the beginning of the process.

                                              "To Be an Artist is to Believe in Life"  Henry Moore

I love this quote by Bertole Brecht....

Unfortunately the colors on these images have not come through very well, maybe if I make the size of the image smaller....

And to end this series is the thought that it is all about ...believing in yourself.  
Believe in Your Self!!!