Dissolving the Blocks

Breathing The Night

I've been struggling with another round of creative block and finally realized it earlier this year. It's funny how it can sneak up on you! You go through daily life and weeks or months go by before you realize that it's been ages since you came to the page (digital or otherwise) to create and play and dream. BAM! You're blocked! How did that happen?

The last time it was this bad, I went through Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" and found it effective in pushing the walls down for a while. Eventually they grew back. I'm probably always going to have to fight this – always have to keep an eye out for blocks and walls creeping up on me.

So, I'm going through The Artist's Way again, writing morning pages, doing exercise, repeating creative affirmations, mocking their mystic woo-woo-ness, even as I marvel at how impactful they can be. These two collages are the first full-blown digital art I've made in months. And I just now, putting them together on the same page, realized how night and day they are!

The hard work of being an artist continues. It's not all in the making of the art, either, but in the making of the person who makes the art. Stay tuned...

Balancing The Sun And Moon

Contemplating the Stars

Sarah Contemplates The Stars

I love starry skies. I love those rare times when we're in so dark a landscape, the milky way appears arching across a sky scattered with more stars than we can count. It's one of those things we tend to miss as modern humans. We talk about the stars "appearing" at night as if they were absent during the day, but they're always with us; it's just that the daylight draws a veil over them. I love that.

I think that's why I put stars in so many of my collages, that and nature is the best artist, which is why I borrow from her so often. Sarah Contemplates The Stars involved Hubble photography (altered quite a bit), multiple hand-painted grunge layers, a vintage photo of the great Sarah Bernhardt, flower photography, and one of my own landscape photographs.

When we gaze into the night sky or across a landscape in quiet contemplation, I think we become more a part of them and they become a part of us. That's what I wanted to convey in this piece.

In The Sea Of Stars

Print available in my InPrnt gallery.

Visible Light

Visible Light

In my imaginary worlds, pretty much everyone and everything can fly, in one way or another.

Available as a print in my InPrnt store.

Tis' A Gif

Lately, I've been having a lot of fun playing with animated gifs. It's good to have something to do just for fun – just to (hopefully) make people smile. It helps keep me focused on having fun and not to get too bogged down in being Serious About Things.

Is this artist getting too serious? Nope!