I’ve been working for nearly a year now on this project, and while I feel so much more empowered as an artist, there is an area where I am still seeking to find myself. In my fearless artistic youth I wouldn’t look at a photo, or anywhere outside of my own mind to find inspiration. I would paint what was in my head. I guess when you are fourteen or fifteen there isn’t yet a lot of clutter in your head. When you are over fifty with two kids, a mortgage, injuries (too many to list!), an elderly father you worry yourself sick over (because you live thousands of miles away and can only help so much by phone), and you’ve spent most of your life ignoring yourself in pursuit of the happiness of everyone else that you love, inspiration gets lost along the way. The attic of a lifetime that resides inside my head is filled with way too many boxes. I search daily through the thousands of photos I’ve taken in a lifetime of “some day”, or the hundreds of photos torn from the pages of far too many magazines admiring the work of others and hoping it lights something inside me, all in pursuit of that moment when I know what it is I want to put on the paper, the canvas, the piece of wood. If you are an adult lucky enough to still hold onto childish dreams I admire you, I think I was born responsible. I’ve spent my life being just a little (a little?) uptight and self-conscious, always afraid to draw attention to myself, yet here I am putting myself out into the world. I guess my days of hiding are coming to an end. Maybe it’s time to turn into one of those people who forget to act their age. Maybe I need to risk attention. Maybe I need to act just a little silly, or better yet embarrass my children. (Fair warning Jessica and Brian) I need to shed a little baggage, clean out the clutter in my brain, and open myself to looking at what’s left in there when I’m finished. Could be there might be some little gem hiding in a dark corner.

I was really, really tired today. One of the lovely advantages of having a cluttered brain is lack of sleep. An hour and a half last night, what a treat! I wasn’t sure I would be up to anything, but I grabbed the box of “inspiration photos”, and the watercolors, and just let things develop. I ended up with two pieces. One is from a beautiful sunset over the nearby mountains, the other, a wild flower I took some time ago on the plateau.