Anticipation

I created these back in February of 2021. I began exploring with marker to see what effects I could produce. My Art is an attempt to explore what's going on inside. Other times, I just want to see 'what happens' when I add specific colours on the page, when I use certain shapes, when I combine images with ones that make no sense. I love playing with colour...it's evident here. 

There was so much going on then...so much darkness, sadness, a yearning for something 'more' but what is this 'more'? What is it? Does it have a name? It's been stressful for most of us. The pandemic has changed our lives in so many ways, on so many fronts. I typically deal with things by writing them down but I can't say that was true in 2020. For the most part, I played things over and over in my mind, hoping I could resolve what was happening. But of course, it was no use. I just kept moving in circles and deeper into the abyss with no light in sight. That's what it felt like. I couldn't see the light. I'd forgotten how powerful the creative process can be. There had been a part of me that felt it was all so pointless. I pushed myself one day and I must credit my husband for that. He pushes me everyday, no joke, to get back to self-expression, to 'my' Art...to the Art I had abandoned for far too long.

 

 

 

10" x 7.6" marker on mix media paper

I longed for a new chapter to begin with the first drawing. I see a tropical force thriving and burning bright. The pops of green and all that red...wow...I can see clearly how much desire and passion there was for something new to burst open and change the landscape of my life. There's something very organic about it. 

 

 

 

10" x 7.6" marker on mix media paper

 

 

In the second, I drew a tree. I often see myself sitting by a tree and since it was February, I felt spring was near and I was anticipating what that spring air would smell and feel like. Enveloped by darkness, there are flowers, fresh earth and soil not quite ready to be received. After all, it was winter...cold, dark and grey. But I insisted the brightness was still there even though I could not see it in nature. It was always there. 

 

 

 

10" x 7.6" marker on mix media paper

The third drawing looks similar to me with the second. The black of the drawings is a reflection of an emptiness...a kind of black hole that if not kept in check, can suck me in whole. But then look at all those swirls. I see them as lines fighting against their cage, fighting against resistance. They resist this feeling of restriction by changing shape, by adapting to their surroundings.

 

 

 

10" x 7.6" marker on mix media paper

The final drawing resembles a bit of the spirit of the first one with all of the bright colours and unlike any of the others, in that my only interest was in drawing circles and a single flower right in the middle of the page. Circles feel eternal and flowers, too. Though they die in the fall, they rise again in the spring, as though they'd never died at all. There's something to that, to that notion, that thought...It's filled with hope, with possibility, with momentum. It's a cycle that never ends. I'll leave it at that.