I spent the morning creating the collage above from photographs I have taken over the years.

I love this time of the year, the slant of light and the lengthening shadows  ~  such beauty ~ so delicious this golden light that spills through the tree branches just outside my window, turning the leaves into shimmering liquid gold.

During the fall, I find myself longing for the haystacks of my youth. The heavenly smell of  hay mixed with the dampness of the earth. The early morning mist kissing my face and the exuberance of youth.

Over the years I find that I have come to value the fall of the year more and more ~  the day by day changes.  The mellow richness and different textures that hone and shape us as we age. The laughter, the tears and everything else in between that makes each one of us unique and beautiful.

So I breathe in the ripeness of the world around me and embrace this inevitable change. The waxing and waning  of the year.

The Opened Heart – Mixed Media

The mixed media piece above is a combination of digital & Traditional painting. The center is a Mixed Medium/Acrylic/Watercolor/Ink  8 x 10 inch painting on canvas that I decided to play around with using Corel Painter 7 and Photoshop. For the background I used scanned papers, fabrics, vintage ledgers and anything else I could think of. Wow, did I have fun!

Later, when I went to the market they had pumpkins and gourds  stacked on bales of hay reminding us that change has come and sweet autumn is here. It all made me feel so grateful for being a part of the eternal dance of life from one season to the next.

thought for the day:

In the deep fall don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come…six, a dozen…to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond vanishes, and the white field
over which the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
- Mary Oliver

The funny thing is, later on, we couldn’t stop thinking about ice cream! lol Hopefully by the time the event takes place in two weeks, the sun will be shining and the weather much nicer than it has been.

However, for me, there is an upside to all the rain. It gives me more time to explore and let my creative wild woman out to play. The mixed media collage below is what happens when some Japanese stamps, gesso, newsprint and one rain crazed baby boomer woman with a glint in her eye meet on a blank canvas. I had such a great time I started two more collages.

Yes, for every season there is a time to play, to create and eat dessert first!

See You There – Mixed Media Collage -8 x 10 inches on canvas

thoughts for the day; “Nourish your eye and spirit with inspiring things. They will bloom with your tending.” – SARK

“The point of art is not simply to express ourselves, but to create an external, concrete form in which the soul of our lives can be evoked and contained.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It takes courage to try new things and explore uncharted waters. Especially when our inner critic keeps whispering in our ear  . . . I wouldn’t do that if I were you!  You really don’t have time for this! Remember how frustrated you can get with Photoshop!

Today, I played around with some photographs taken over the past couple of months, and tried my hand at creating a photomontage/collage using Photoshop & Painter 7.

I tried several different techniques I had read about, and ended up merging them all together in this one image. Some of the techniques worked and some didn’t, but I sure had fun!

Photoshop and I have an uneasy relationship, and one of these days I am going to take a class. I know it would make my life so much easier!

thought for the day;

“Another word for creativity is courage.” – George Prince

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook

Yesterday as I was cleaning the studio, I came across a couple of watercolor and acrylic paintings, which were works in progress. They were my first attempt to break out of the cyclic creative block that I seemed unable to shake this past week.

One of them represented the different emotional and psychological imprints that can happen when one has a chronic illness. The woman figure symbolizes a medical practitioner, the flower in the vintage lab beaker is representative of our creative adaptability and  innate biological ability to heal. The bird symbolizes tapping into our own creative and healing energies.

I had covered the other canvas with sections of one of my favorite articles about a grandmother who used plant medicine to heal her granddaughter, and her ability to blend her will with the energies of the earth to nourish and sustain her family.

As I looked at these two separate paintings, I suddenly felt inspired to scan both images and thought why not combine both of them together, so I did.

I had to cut, rearrange and then merge all the different images to make them fit together. The whole process took me a couple of hours and it really helped me to break out of my creative slump. I used Photoshop & Painter IX to create the image above  from my original paintings.

So  here’s a very heartfelt thank you to all the women, mothers and grandmothers who inspire, nurture and sustain us throughout our lives.