The rough and the smooth
Some days are good, and some days are like today – a mess of hormones, pain, panic, fear, anniversaries and general crapness. I think i'll be getting an early night tonight.
I will also be putting pen to paper and making a list of the blessings in my life, to help bring back a bit of perspective. And the list will include my sweet friend Thea who blogged about my photos yesterday (thank you honey) and the fact that my Etsy store was mentioned on the inspiring Decor8 blog today.
Autumn Special Offer… and a giveaway
Today sees the start of an Autumn Special Offer I'll be running in my Etsy store for the next two weeks: buy any two prints, print sets or cards and get one free. I'm already thinking about the Christmas presents I need to buy, and thought lots of others might be too!
As the last print giveaway I ran on this blog was such fun, i thought it was about time for another one – anyone fancy an 8" x 8" print of the Holga above (it's my favourite)? If so, just leave a comment and I'll draw the winner on Saturday :-)
If you build it, they will come
As it usually is when the three of us get together, it was a lovely weekend, one filled with walks on the beach, a photo session, dinners that were lukewarm because we were chatting too much, my first ever polaroid (taken with a £2 camera I found in a street market) and Anna’s first ever collage. We all talked about our creative dreams, acknowledging how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to go. We shared some much-needed sister time (Anna having been adopted by me and Abby years ago).
Sunday morning we put our design hats on and mocked up a dust jacket for the novel Anna has started writing. Using one of the portraits I’d taken of her the day before as an author photo, what started as a bit of fun turned into a powerful exercise in creative (and literal) visualisation. Much has been written about the power of ‘acting as if’ something you want is already in your life, and it’s definitely something i’m going to be doing a lot more of.
All three of us put our energy into the project, and that in itself shifted the earth on its axis a bit (no really!), so perhaps the more people who know your dream the more real, and possible, it becomes. Mock up your book (I’ve heard great things about this online resource)… curate your own exhibition in your home… design your first fashion collection in a notebook… buy a guide book and choose the road you’ll live on in your dream city…
I’ve been thinking a lot about my dreams and as stuck as i feel in the day-to-day problems I find myself battling with (money shortages, business doubts and dips in self-confidence), i can’t help but feel a little excited about them. The only person who can make my life what i want it to be is me – lately this has felt more do-able than ever.
Glue on my fingers
Noted last night: "If photography is recording (and interpreting) what I see around me then painting could be viewed as creating a representation of what’s inside me. Photos of my unconscious?"
It sounds obvious, I know, but last night I was really struck by how I don’t know what will come out onto the page or canvas until it is there. It’s the opposite of photography (for me anyway) and I’m loving how these two disciplines complement each other. I have so much creative energy swirling inside me at the moment, and I seem to have reached the point in this grief journey where the sole focus is on my new life, not my old one any more. As I’m not in a relationship I can spend every single drop of my energy on my own projects/desires/dreams. It’s incredibly liberating.
I love how you feel it in your solar plexus when an image (be it photographic, collaged or painted) comes into focus. It’s a calm centred feeling, a grounded yes, an outward breath. I’ve been appreciating this quiet place of creating, carved out during a busy week of doctors appointments and poster designing and general getting-my-life-in-gear goings on. Tonight the lovely Anna arrives, and tomorrow my sister will be here too, so i’ve got a weekend with my girls to look forward to. I’ll be thinking about my girls spread across the globe too :-)
Close your eyes and hold your breath…
{details from today’s tests}
"To be creative, you must be brave and allow yourself to take risks. You must also be a little crazy. But have an appropriate degree of perspective. Reassure yourself that by doing a watercolour or throwing a pot you won’t set off some chain reaction that destroys your entire universe." ~ Danny Gregory, via Megg
The trick is to tell yourself it’s only a test, that it won’t matter what it looks like as it’s just a practice canvas. So you slap the paper on and load your knife with paint and you don’t pay too much attention to what you’re doing: you’re playing. It’s only later, when you’re sipping your tea and looking at the results, that you see how the experiments are showing you the way, and that when you relax and let go of the need to do everything perfectly, something magical happens. Holding your breath and tensing up doesn’t work; being limber and loose does.
You decide that from now on all your attempts will be classified as tests.
Switching gears
8×8 print available in my Etsy store
Life feels like one long breadcrumb trail at the moment. I’ve been painting – working with mixed media on canvas – and it’s so fantastic to be playing with colour and brushes and sequins and crinkly old papers. It’s fantastic, oh yes it is, but it’s also incredibly hard too. Hard to ignore the inner critic, to tell the gnarled old perfectionist side of myself who doesn’t want to do anything that won’t be absolutely 100% perfect to get lost. There’s something bubbling away inside me and it needs to come out, so I’m doing the painterly equivalents of shitty first drafts and trying not to be too critical of the results.
I also have an advert to design, an article to write, photos to edit and prints to order, so in between times I’m snatching moments to paint and play. I have no idea where all this manic creativity is going, but I’m simply following the crumbs, hoping they’ll lead me to a destination in the not-too-far-off future where all this will make sense: the photographs, the paintings, the words. There are moments when I feel like I’m downloading the plans for a future life, and one by one I piece it all together. Other times I wonder who I think I am to be wasting my time on all this…
The battle continues.
In other news, the lovely Ms Jen Gray had a meme on her blog that I couldn’t resist doing too:
*a special talent:
This isn’t that special but I have an incredibly good memory for names.
*a secret nobody knows:
I possess 45+ bottles of perfume, thanks to my days as a fashion journalist – my bathroom looks like a mini Sephora
*a personality trait you find attractive:
confidence
*a personality trait you find unattractive:
conceitedness
*a song that melts you:
All that I want by The Weepies
*the biggest truth you have learned this year:
anything is possible, but it is up to us to make it happen
an item you are currently coveting:
a necklace from here
*what gives you peace :
my favourite books
*what perfume are you currently wearing:
Prada’s Infusion D’Iris
*do you dream much?:
unfortunately yes, in Technicolor
*what word(s) do you tend to say too much:
oh really?, fuck and absolutely
*in school, what kind of teen were you?:
the introverted artistic one
*describe yourself in 5 words:
creative, witty, wise, passionate, empathic
*a weird quirk:
I spend too many days working wearing only my dressing gown
*have you ever been in love?:
yes, three times, and I loved every second of it
*has your heart ever been broken?:
the day he died my heart shattered, but two and a half years later it’s beginning to mend, into a whole new shape
*favourite things to wear?:
jeans, flip flops, necklaces
Keeping the faith
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." ~ Nietzsche
I’ve been wondering if I am walking along the right path, if this dream of working as a photographer can be achieved. I mean, does anyone actually want their portrait taken? Who really wants to buy a photo of a beach hut? Some days I can’t seem to muster up the self-belief and faith needed to keep trying. But then I start updating my website and let myself get lost in pictures, and just as I’m about finished I receive a phone call from a woman who wants me to photograph her four children, who tells me how great my photos are, tells me she has been meaning to phone me for months and today was the day. We arrange the shoot and chat for a while, and putting down the phone I hear a ping from my email. Waiting for me is a note from another mother, whose toddler I photographed at a recent christening. She tells me the photos i sent her brought tears to her eyes. It is the best thing she could have told me.
I’m so quick to be discouraged, so quick to doubt that I can do it, but then the universe swoops in with a kind word and gently nudges me forward. Just when I need it.
Friends reunited
"The question is not what you look at, but what you see." ~ Henry David Thoreau
I see a beautiful inspiring woman who spent the weekend with me, a woman I admire greatly and miss already. Since she left I have been feeling quiet and thoughtful, but the busy-ness of my days has left little time to mull over all the changes that are coming into my life. And I know they must come, and i know i’m probably ready, but today i don’t feel ready at all. So I reach for the poetry, and i pull the blanket over me as I lie back on the sofa, and do the things I know will keep me calm. Like breathing…
