New Folk Flower

So many warm and sunny days have spent their time with us this April. I can't say that I've minded although I was beginning to worry after days and days without rain. Thanks to the rain gods, the rain did come this past weekend and have visited us here and there every day since. Things are greening up again and look well hydrated. It goes to show how important balance is.

I'm about ready to wrap up my series of folk flower paintings and send them to the press to be made into cards. Here's a new one! It may be my personal favorite so far...most likely because of the color palette.  I have a soft spot for turquoise and think these colors play off that color background well. I hope to post two more finished designs later this week so stop by again if you are interested to see them!

I'll leave you with a photograph of twilight through our trees that was taken last week on a balmy evening. I never tire of looking at the dark silhouette of trees against the colored sky painted by the setting sun.

Thistle

I finished this thistle design last week and I'm painting in another new design today. I'm having fun coming up with bold, graphic, color saturated designs as I come down the home stretch of my folk flower series. I've been looking at a lot of the embroidery work on Polish and Hungarian festive clothing. The motifs are seeping into my brain and coming out on paper.  As I paint these simplified flowers and plants I feel a connection to the land and my gardens, the natural world, even while I sit at my desk indoors. It's a pleasant feeling like one I have while I slowly and meditatively weed my gardens at home.

I paint these images and dream of trying to learn and take up embroidery at some point in the future. What would happen if I mixed embroidered elements into the paintings? I think it would be fun to try. Also I'm noticing, probably because of the graphic, simple, yet precise quality to this work, I'm dreaming of painting bigger and looser in the next round of creations once I'm finished with the two series I'm working on. I need to let loose a bit. I'm looking forward to playing more freely with the next round of bigger work.

Bright Sun Shiny Day

 

Spring isn't just flirting with us anymore. It's here to stay for it's season. Daffodils, lungwort and hyacinth are blooming in my garden and the dandelions are coming out with a cheerful hello.  

I wanted to post some pictures of Pisanki given that many of us celebrated Easter, Passover and spring this past weekend. I bought this decorated egg in Poland last summer. I love pisanki: the symbolism, the colors, the decorations, the act of making them. The egg has symbolized for many, many, many years, fertility and the revival of nature.  In Poland and elsewhere "Christianity imbued the painted egg with new meanings transforming it into the Easter egg and giving it a new symbolism but it could not totally eradicate the elements of pagan beliefs associated with the painted egg. Easter eggs, blessed in church by a priest, were continued to be used as a sort of charm for many different occasions: to be placed under the corner stone of a house; to help making bees to give more honey; to guard against misadventure on a journey; to secure happiness in marriage; to promote multiplication in the animal, floral and human worlds, to a name but a few of its functions."(http://www.ppld.co.uk/en/easter_pisanki.htm)

Usually between Easter and May Day a group of friends and I get together to make this style of egg together. I hope we do it this year as I have a lot of inspiration from my trip last summer.

I was in Pennsylvania last weekend to celebrate Passover and Easter and visit with our immediate family. It was a quick trip but so nice, ...especially nice to spend a bit of time with our families. Spring is ahead of us by a few weeks down there and it was a treat to "time travel" through the season. I like to think of it as time travel anyway because I get a tease of what's to come then get to head home, north to the cooler hills, and watch the whole thing unfurl slowly before my eyes.

Travel seems to take it out of me a bit more nowadays but I'm back in my groove and heading down the home stretch towards a goal of having a bunch of new merchandise (cards and prints) for a spring festival on May 12th. I also plan on updating my Etsy shop, blog and will have my promotional and marketing materials written up and posted. Actually, I have a lot to share with you in the coming weeks as I take it up another level. I'll begin a portfolio page here with my blog of projects I've been working on. I was commissioned to design a tattoo and and will be posting about that. My art now lives on a human body! Wow, now that is something permanent. I'm also putting the finishing touches on a wedding invitation I was commissioned to design. I can't wait to share these projects with you!

I just started an online course this week called Creative Courage which is offered by a lovely artist named Stephanie Levy. I'm hoping to continually learn tricks of the trade especially in relation to starting my own home business and balancing my creative life with being a new mom. So far this week has been full of good writing exercises, reading and interviews with inspiring creative women.

I hope you all are enjoying spring in your own way and feeling the energy of new life and new inspiration during this beautiful season.

Something Else I've Been Creating...

As you can see, I have been working on another important creation for awhile. A baby and my belly grew and grows as I work on card designs, gouaches, paper cuts and a small business plan. This past fall and winter leading through the spring to early summer is a time of important creativity. We anticipate the arrival of our first little one in early July. 

I've been holding off on writing about this big development openly on my blog as it's been a personal, quiet time that Josh and I have been enjoying these past months. Yet as I head into my third trimester it feels good to really bring this reality out as there are thoughts I'm sure I'll want to share and many things in my life and work that will reflect the changes happening.

It's been a time of much anticipation, excitement and change. It's curious and interesting to me that I'm preparing to give birth to my creative business around the same time of giving birth to this being and welcoming him or her into Josh's and my life. I'm reaching a new stage in my adult life and I'm enjoying this rite of passage. Although, to honest, there are also those awake early morning, 3am, thoughts swirling around my head wondering if I can pull all this off? wondering what it will be like to be a new mom? thinking about the preparations that need to happen for the baby's arrival and looking forward to meeting the little one face to face. 

It is a time of wondrous wonderings.