August Break Day Five: Three

Three teasels. A painting half way through. I cannot tell you how good it feels to have spent a happy two hours at my desk simply playing. No pressure. No need to create a masterpiece. After 18 months of poor health and dwindling motivation in the face of gruelling soulwork, to feel that childish giddiness over something as simple as going to work, coming home, applying some paint and having a glass of wine it's... well... *cue big contented sigh*

You know when you see crowds of teenage girls chatting and giggling, swollen with hormones, garish nail polish, furiously backcombed hair and you can't imagine what could have made them laugh so breathlessly, barely able to contain their excitement? And if you're having a bad day you might frown at their exuberance but if you dug a little deeper you know you would give anything to feel that free again? It feels like that.

August Break Day Four: Orange

August Break Day Three: Window

The bedroom windows as they were today. Closed with curtains drawn, no sound filtering through from the busy street outside. There were also books, cups of peppermint tea, some dark chocolate and a well earned rest. Even nine weeks after surgery my body is still surprising me with new pinches and pains as it tries to mend itself.
I've never really been a tea drinker until this year and though I still don't like your average cup of English tea, I love a nice, fragrant herbal mix. The ritual of boiling the kettle, letting the bag steep for a few minutes, waiting for it to cool enough so that the mug can be cupped and drawn close, it calms a fretful mind like nothing else.

August Break Day Two: Pattern

I am a woman of many kimonos.

August Break Day One: Lunch

So i'm participating in this as a way of getting me back into blogging. A prompt, one photo a day and somewhere along the way perhaps the story of the last twelve months will emerge. It's a story that includes new freindships, breakdowns, eight months of therapy, two major rounds of surgery and lots and lots of healing. Roughly in that order. That's the short version.
For now, let's just think about lunch. Which I forgot to do. One pesto salad scoffed whilst prepping for the new term, mind elsewhere until all that was left was an empty tupperware container. But this is lunch number two, a treat after a morning of paperwork. Not lunch exactly but the perfect way to end forty minutes browsing in the Oxfam bookshop; a haven of muted classical music, bookiness and fairtrade chocolate punctuated only by the smell of wet pavement wafting through the door. Ah, the humble Marks and Spencer's caramel tart. Truly the nicest sweet treat you can buy yourself in a market town with no artisan bakery.

Confessions of a straight lace

This is my 2013 vision board.
Owing to various circumstances I didn't finish it until last week.
I've had the images stashed away for ages, the words rolling around my head. I know how I want this year to feel.
The thing is this: I'm worried about that word Wild. I don't think I am capable of being Wild. Not really.
That woman up there, on that board, she is so intimidating to me right now.
I was teaching my watercolour class yesterday. We were painting images of rambling gardens. Lovely English cottage gardens. Lupins, poppies, alliums. Little stone benches. Willow trees bowing in a light June breeze and little gateways hidden behind over grown foliage. I had one of those rare moments where you actually recognise your own contentment at the time you are feeling it. I had found a little patch of sunlight to sit in. There was the sound of paintbrushes in water and I think I might have heard a cookoo in the distance.
On Monday I will pop over to Hornton, the village my mum comes from. A lot of my family still live there and there will be proper Mayday celebrations. There will be a Maypole. Homemade cake and cider in the pub garden.
I don't know how to be that woman; wild, unapologetic, natural and brave, in these quaint settings. That little word. It just popped into my head without me giving it a huge amount of thought as to what it meant to me. And, of course, in my woefully naive way, I have become worried that it might mean going out when I don't want to, drinking when I don't want to, talking to people when I don't want to, talking to men when I don't want to. I'm worried it might mean accidentally becoming something I'm not. Which I have accidentally done before.

___

Ok. It's three hours later. I very often write blog posts that I don't publish, mainly because they are a bit open ended.
I have decided to define what this word means to me.
Wild.
It means being slightly more audacious.
It means apologising less.
It means tending to my own needs before everyone else's.
It means listening to my body more.
It means calling people out on their bullshit. Quietly and politely. And then probably running away and hiding.
It means, actually, just doing what I bloody well want to do. Without reference to any of the dozens of people I nod at and say hello to as I walk from one end of this small town to the other.

Is the sun shining yet?

Today I am blogging from my sick bed. I seem to have spent a large part of this year feeling distinctly under the weather until last week when I well and truly hit the wall and under the weather became 'flu. Like proper grown up 'flu. If I wasn't feeling so ill I would be quite impressed at my body's ability to completely floor me in this unexpected way. I started January in such high spirits but the last few months have seen me forced to slow down a bit. Like everyone else, I am blaming the weather. Has there been a winter quite like this in recent memory?

 

I am feeling a bit better today and just wanted to post some images of the work students did on my Handmade Art Journals workshop a few weekends ago. The weather was freezing but everyone made it in and we had such a fun weekend playing with paints, inks, fabric scraps and found imagery.

One of the very best things about teaching these workshops is how inspiring I find them. For me teaching isn't about me imparting information and students copying what I do; it's more like an exchange of ideas. They take the techniques I show them in whole new directions, they filter them through their own unique skill set and come up with things I would never have thought of. I always leave these workshops completely amazed at the beauty of the work that's produced as well as buzzing with new ideas of my own. It highlights one of the things I have always believed: that creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum, it needs feeding and watering regularly and teaching does that for me.