this evening, i finally made it to my studio. i am not painting much (or at all) these days. i don’t know why. i find myself mostly drawn to collage, markers and writing. it seems simple and i hope sustainable. so, i culled my working notebooks even more.
i feel almost notebook naked working with just a handful of notebooks. I am wondering if it is possible to let of of even more but i don’t want to push it. Ahem, and by let go, i mean put in my supply closet…so there’s that.
honestly, i really did not expect my pregnancy to last so long into this month. my last kiddo came super early and like a novice, i thought it would be similar this time. so i plugged into a bunch of things earlier this summer and now i feel like i am in the meanwhile. it has given me a lot of time to think and sorta prepare but i also feel like i am twiddling my thumbs. i don’t have anything against twiddling my thumbs but you know how that feels after a while. i don’t want to get to deep into anything but i also want to do some creative work. hence, the collage fever, i guess.
jamie riddler recently published an article about capsuling art supplies. i sorta do this without any real method to my madness. my work space is small and i have a large closet that i put things in i am not actively using. however, we all know that i have a craft coupon using problem, so i am trying to cull that habit but i realize there are worse things i could be buying than art supplies. still, i want to try and use what i have for a while. i want to make creating easier and not about choosing from a overwhelming variety of choices. one thing that i have loved about the whole one book july experience, even if i went a wee bit rogue, is the simplicity of it. no matter what other notebook i tried out i knew where i suppose to return.
anyways, i think that i am finally at the place where i just want to wholeheartedly embrace art journaling for a while. i don’t think that has always been my goal but when i listen to myself that feels sustainable in these moments. i feel like maybe i wanted to push myself to new heights because i felt like that is what i should be doing versus what i actually needed to do in my life. right now, the most important thing for me is to be able to create easily.
in the past, (aka like last week) i tried to classify my notebooks by tight themes and it just does not work for my particular creative brain. so, right now for the sake of creating i am just going to treat every notebook/sketchbook like an art journal and then that reduces the need to have 500 open at once (or is this a lie i am telling myself?). i am evening toying with not working in more than one at a time but that feels like too much a burden…so i will just allow myself a limited paper party.
these little changes, have of course, made me think about little change i could do around here. i don’t think writing about my emotional terrain is sustainable…useful but not sustainable…so i think those thoughts may be slower in appearing on here. i won’t give them up all together because i think sometimes they just need to appear but i want to make sure i am being emotionally responsible to myself and that is always the dance i do with my writing.
the question is where to go from here…i can’t just write about art journaling that would be too tiresome ( for me to sustain) and i don’t want to write about my own personal issues continually…but i want to write. do i need a blog to do that? probably not but there is something special about blogging that i like. it’s not like it once was but it is still endearing.
i feel like an old dinosaur still trying to find her voice. maybe that is the problem i don’t know my voice or my voice is weaving and changing so much that i can’t keep up.
these past few years have been a whirlwind. it’s no wonder i’ve used my blog spaces to process it all. i am so thankful they have been here. writing into this little internet void is healing and connective in a strange way. i like that i don’t have to keep with anything or anybody here. maybe that is the allure of the personal blog these days. it’s a space to create and share without any long-standing obligations.
i don’t know what this means. maybe i will tuck in my hat and come back at a later time full of stories and ideas or maybe i will be back tomorrow (or the next day) twiddling my thumbs and rambling on because i think the only way to find a voice is to use it.