Playing with Paint

My process:   I always try to make use of the paints that my clients and group participants leave on their palettes.  I hate to waste acrylic paint.  I have had a few canvases that I keep undercoating with left over paint.  The other evening after a young girl I work with left, I started dabbing away at the canvas with her left over colors.   This painting is what emerged.  I like it.  I had fun without attachment and the entire process made me happy.  I had so much fun with this piece that I moved to another canvas.
( both of these are 10"x10 by the way)

This time I took off in another direction, using a stencil and working around it with color, line and letters.

Now I am thinking about going back to the first one and adding the word Inspire in painted cursive.  What do you think?   I always love to play with words that have meaning for me.  If anyone is reading this post and has an opinion let me know.

I actually haven't painted with acrylic in quite a while, other than to do backgrounds for collage pages in my journals, but I had so much fun on these canvases, that I might do more.  Once again the appeal is in the play not so much the product, but when I like what happens, it makes me happy.

Winter Approaches-Into the Dark Holding the Light

As the Winter Solstice approaches, I am trying to place my attention on holding the light..as I feel the dark moving into my body and soul.    

It is a time to move into the deep of the night and  to take time to dream my life anew.  With the New Year comes change and it is time for reevaluating direction and remembering to follow dreams put on hold.

Encaustic on foam core.  

"Follow your Dreams"

I am revisiting the places, people, and blogs where I find inspiration to guide me towards the light. 

I love Lanie Gerity's  Artist's Happiness Challenge and her Secrets for a Happy Artist's Life.

14 Secrets for a Happy Artists Life. Here they are.

Find 3 good things every day, whether they are experiences, or objects or both.  

Find a way to use them in art.

Make everything special.  Embellish you life.

Look for Fairy God-mothers and Angels.  

Be ready for experiences that will delight and surprise you.

Play more often.   Look for smiling faces.

Wish everyone a happy life.

Find something to love about where you are every day.

Make art everyday. 

Create time for yourself.

Honor thy grandmothers as much as possible.

Play with the grandchildren as much as possible.

Create beauty wit what you have on hand.

Mare art with friends.  Make art as gifts.

Create a list of  secrets for a happy life and pass it on.

So please pass this on...I too am making a list for a happy life.   

Happy and Blessed Solstice to All  

HOLD THE LIGHT!!!

HOLDING THE LIGHT 

 Encaustic mixed media.  3"x5"  on masonite panel

Available for purchase on my etsy store.

Soularteeclectica

I have just come across this wonderful poem about the winter solstice 

and I just have to add it here.  Enjoy....

So, the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us - Listen!!

All the long echoes sing he same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!!

Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day