It is always a bit frightening to share a part of who you are as an artist especially when you feel like you are not being the best creative version of yourself self that you can be. I was feeling stuck in a creative slump when I wrote the last newsletter.  As most of us know, we can often become our own worst critic and my inner critic was on overdrive these past few months.  In hindsight, I am happy that I decided to share my vulnerabilities as an artist with you.  I was also incredibly grateful that some of you wrote back in response with many wonderful suggestions on way to overcome the struggle I was in.   I took the advice to heart and acted on some of the ideas suggested, so thank you! I realized with the responses, just how wonderful it is to have a community of people that are so willing and eager to help me along in my creative process.

This journey of exploring my feelings took me to a place I had not really considered before in my process of creating art.  I have always created from a place of joy and excitement that learning brings. With that being said I have been in the learning arena for a very long time. In the past I spent my time learning the how- to’s of creating my particular form of art, which has been a bit controlled. Up to this point in my career, my art has depicted a sense of order that I see in nature, as it has been tamed through gardening. Left to its own devices though, nature is anything but neat.

As an artist that is continually learning, I am realizing that there are depths of how we learn and it is forever expanding. I am in a new phase of wanting to express a more free and deeper form of an untamed garden. My personal life is becoming a reflection of this as I am letting go of what has been important to me in the past and allowing new ways of looking at the future that work better for this stage in my life. By expanding my creative assertiveness, I am beginning to see myself, in what some would say, “a whole new light” and I am excited to take you along on this new journey with me.