Creating New Content and Gathering Inspiration
Spring is a time of renewal and discovery. I'm putting new ideas to work and planting seeds of hope. The Serial Artist in me returns.
The grass is becoming more vibrant, verdant, by the day. Tree branch tips are shedding the husks protecting new budding leaves. And my daffodils are in bloom. Last week I cleaned up the last of the soggy, fallen oak leaves, exposing the damp earth, green tips of lily bulbs, sprouting herbs and a number of dandelion plants. I piled broken sticks and deadwood along the road for the first brush pick-up. They say you don’t know it’s Spring until it’s actually Summer in Wisconsin. I disagree.
Indoors, five of ten orchids are blooming, along with these gorgeous Amaryllis bulbs (photo below) that I just took out of storage and stuck in a pot. I also transplanted a flowering succulent. Nature can be so easy sometimes.
Having just completed Book Two in my Detective Morgan Jewell series, Deepest Secrets, I am on to bigger creative endeavors. Publishing, though it seems like a necessary and tedious task, is another way I can express my individuality with my imprint logo, with the epigraphs and acknowledgements. And with the cover design. It’s an exciting and critical part of the book-writing process, like the final stretch of the race, closing in on the finish line.
What’s more, I began writing Book Three. Creativity is blooming!
Since I recently find myself with a LOT more extra time in the day, several times a week I like to spend a couple hours playing piano. I’m currently playing three Chopin Etudes, the E. Granados La Maja y el Riusenor, and I’m learning The Rustle of Spring by C. Sinding and Nocturnal Tangier by Leopold Godowsky. Music is a tangible way to express myself, which helps me work through the grief and trauma of the past year.
One specific way I’m processing my emotions, is by making art pictures that I’m calling Deco’llage. In previous posts, I called these creative pieces “sticker pictures” which didn’t quite encompass the whole process. The pictures are a little bit decoupage, and a little bit collage. I put several images gathered from sticker books on top of a single larger image background. Sometimes I include one word made of random letters cut from a magazine. I finish it by blending the backgrounds of each sticker, so there are no white edges showing, and make each image appear to fit with the whole. Recently I’ve begun to finish the pictures with Crayola Washable Paint Sticks.
I LOVE stickers and have found several amazing sticker books at the bookstores.
Check these out:
It takes me several hours, usually spread out over a couple days, to complete the picture. I pick a theme, cut the white edges off the stickers, place them or use a glue stick. I finish it off by blending the edges with the background and sometimes add a over layer of the colored paint stick. I love those because they color over any type of surface. I blend it with my fingers and smear the paint into the edges of all the rough surfaces.
I Am Enough is one of my favorites, most likely because I love the blues and greens. Also because it’s a good message to keep telling myself.
Adversity- Bottled is the most recent. This time I added several sparkling stickers at the very end. Too bad they didn’t show up in the photo, because this one is really quite shiny and sparkly!
Though grief isn’t new to me—I’ve lost both parents, my brother to circumstances, all my grandparents to age, and now my husband—trauma is a completely new experience. I find making art, writing in my journal, meditating and playing music, all help me process these unusual new feelings and help me learn uncharted ways (for me) to be in the world. I’ve been profoundly effected by what I experienced last fall. I’m facing new fears, discovering anxiety that wasn’t there before, and uncovering closeted PTSD. In so many ways, I’m learning to live with the new me.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Facing the beast, naming it, experiencing it and learning ways to be comfortable with it all help me along my process. There’s still a long road ahead, but for now, I’m finding myself in art. And Art is helping me find the new me.
Oh, and kitties. Ivy and Moon make my day!
I really admire how you deal with your grief.
I recently bought a John Derien botanical sticker book without knowing what to do with it. You have given me ideas, although your talent far exceeds mine! Keep on writing and making art.