Reverie
“The Angel” Original Watercolor
I recently started reading a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. If you’ve read it yourself, you’re smiling, because you know how powerful it is. For those of you who aren’t familiar, The Artist’s Way is a twelve-week, self-taught process of “discovering and recovering your creative self.” After only just reading the introduction, I knew this was going to be a game-changer.
I originally picked up the book because a friend of mine was doing the process with her partner and couldn’t stop raving about it. Then I saw another artist refer to it on Instagram, and then another person asked me if I had ever read it, so I finally took all of these as signs from the cosmos and gave in to see what all the fuss was about.
You see, since the beginning of this year I’d been in somewhat of a creative rut. I started out 2023 doing a “100 days of painting” challenge, which I ended up quitting 29 days in because my creative well had seemingly run dry and frankly, I was tired of counting the days. So in effort to make sure I didn’t start to hate painting, I listened to my intuition and stopped.
I realized later on that there was a bit of a war raging on inside of me. There was first, a particular way I had imagined painting, and then there was the way that I had been painting… It was as if I couldn’t quite make the leap between these two worlds. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with myself because my vision wasn’t matching up with what I was physically able to create — or rather, what I was allowing myself to create...
This is where The Artist’s Way came into my life.
“Earth Yawning” Original Watercolor
Each week, the reader is assigned a set of tasks to complete. Among them are reflective writing practices that help to find the root to our creative blocks so we can understand and work through them. These could be experiences in childhood that brought up a sense of shame, all the way to the false beliefs we carry about our creative efforts.
Let me tell you, I was eating it up, because this is the exact thing that I do with my clients in my homeopathic practice. Create an environment of curiosity to find the root of a wound, or what is keeping us stuck so we can move through it. In a sense, this book is a method of healing the creative self.
As I’ve worked my way through the process, what began to happen was nothing short of miraculous… It was as if I had tapped into a much deeper creative well. The art just began to pour out of me.
“Primaveral” Original Watercolor
Over the course of the last eight weeks, I’ve been in a process of envisioning and creating, envisioning and creating. The result? An inner journey brought into the outer, into the physical. Visions come to life. A collection of ten original pieces I’ve titled, “Reverie.” Some of the proudest work I have ever done.
The message behind this series is this: all that we imagine has its place in the physical world. What we dream of creating desires to be created. A whisper, a prayer, a wish on our lips, journeys out and becomes. Spirit wants life. As above, so below.
The works in this collection are my dreams come to life. A stepping out into a realm unknown to my hands yet familiar to the deepest parts of my soul. I hope that they move you as they’ve moved me.