It Begins

January 2014

I skipped the whole year of 2013. It was not a "bad" year, it was a different year.
It was a year of great changes, of endings and beginnings. The beginnings have been good ones.

We lost our beloved Dalmatian, Lizzie. We gained 3 adopted kittens who help fill the void. I have a great niece I spend a couple of days a week with. She is a toddler now and she fills up a huge part of my heart.

The studio became the kitten nursery. My website was taken down and my materials put away. The day to day of my life took on a different pattern in 2013 with Lizzie becoming increasingly frail and routines caring for her and others, more intense. The drive to create artwork just took to the shelf.

What is interesting to me is that for being such an integral part of my being, it was relatively easy to set it aside. That means no thinking about art, dreaming about painting, reading about art, looking at art or being inspired by my Muse who has always been a chatter box in my ear. Filling me with ideas for paintings that sometimes I could just not keep up with.

So what has changed? The new routines with the kittens has stabilized. They are wonderful spirits who do not know how they will come to inspire me. Maxwell and his two sisters Cami and Ella are nine months old now and they just fit expertly into our home and life.
I have a pretty regular schedule with helping care for my great niece so now it is easy to work around that.
Most importantly...I am being drawn back into a creative frame of mind that is pulling me to the center once again. I have had some flashes of ideas for painting, I can start to hear a hum of chatter in the background of myself...the Muse is waking. She has had a long enough vacation from me I guess.

It is starting slowly and building up. I feel it.

We begin. I have a long path to walk but I am in no hurry at the moment. I am letting the waves wash over me and I will see each step back on this path to center as a meditative process, with awareness and appreciation. I think it is a good start.