Sunday Reflection - Letting Go

ALTERED BOOK

Acrylics, water soluble crayons, water color pencils

pen, yarn

Where to start this post so it flows and makes sense.....do you know how sometimes things occur that cause a "shift" in how you think about things?

I had a shift....maybe it's an awakening...since I discovered Tracy Verdugo's approach to art.  I am excited.  I've been reading her book which arrived in my mailbox this week.  It's about much more than art and I love it.  I would love to have a cup of coffee with her!  So I bought a canvas this week....yes, art outside of a book or journal....and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can create.  I have an artist friend who gave me her old easel that has been stored in her attic...it needs a little bit of TLC but once I take care of that....I'm used to working flat, but the easel is really the way to go when you're working on a larger piece.

I just finished reading a book call "Learning to Walk in the Dark" by Barbara Brown Taylor.  She's a NY Times best-selling author.  I'm mentioning this because it ties in with art for me...which is all about the dark and the light.  She says, "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light"..... She writes, " I need darkness as much as I need light."  

Segue to Tracy Verdugo who says something very interesting: "a creative block is merely the darkness from which all light originates.  It is the crisis from which surrender emerges."    

I had a quiet moment yesterday afternoon, sitting on the floor in my attic.  I opened up a trunk that for a number of years when my son was young, I just kept putting his elementary school papers in. I haven't opened that trunk in probably 18 years!  I'm in the process of organizing the attic and getting rid of stuff and my son is getting ready to go to grad school.  I just loved sifting through his art work, compositions & poems, report cards, school photos. There were even all of the cards sent to us when he was born.  Life.  What to save and what to toss.  Some things were put back into the dark trunk.

 Dark to light.  Light to dark...