Every day spring feels a little bit closer! As a lover of every season but winter, I can’t help feeling excited about all the trees and plants waking up from their winter sleep again. Most of our lawn is still covered by snow but slowly day by day the edges of the snow creep back and more and more bare lawn emerges. With above freezing temperatures predicted all week I’m hoping that we turn the corner into spring soon.
Waking Up
I feel as if I am waking up creatively as spring awakens around me.
The light has been captivating me in simple scenes throughout my day and I revel in the longer daylight that the season’s turning brings.
This morning in our bedroom as I looked around and noticed the light on my bedspread. It spread gently from bright to dark in such a soft beautiful way that I picked up my phone camera to make a photograph of it. The beauty of it filled me with joy.
Letting Go of Perfectionism
I’ve been feeling a big creative surge recently. After a long pause in watercolor painting I’m back to painting frequently again. I let myself get sidetracked by perfectionism for awhile, thinking I was “no good” at painting. Finally I decided that I didn’t care if I was good or not. I just like playing around with watercolor paint, water, and a paintbrush. It’s fun, even if nothing turns out as I had planned.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life …”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
I can’t remember a day in the past few weeks when I haven’t picked up my camera to make at least a few images. Every day that passes reminds me that time is short. The time to create is NOW.
“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Play Around With No End in Mind
The more you create without any specific outcome in mind, the more possibilities will arise in your work. Recently a chance idea of combining my watercolor paintings with my photographs using Photoshop has opened whole new vistas of creative ideas for me.
It’s been so much fun!
A Recent Painting (just playing around with color, techniques, and brushes
There are seasons in each life, just as in the world around us. When you are dealing with family illness, big life changes, or personal problems, you may have no energy to create. Surviving and doing what has to be done may be all you can do. But when you emerge from the crisis, making time for creating can help heal you and make your life bigger and more expansive. Be patient with yourself and find the right rhythm for you.
“You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
May you begin waking up creatively.
May you walk in beauty.
Quilted Sky — Blue sky and bedspread photo combined in Photoshop
Tree photo combined with watercolor painting in Photoshop
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