I'm learning... new photography skills, new photo editing software, a new language (well, new to me!), new ways of doing familiar things, new jewellery making skills, time management (again), new subjects that interest me, new ways to look after myself... everything is a learning curve just now - right down to the new set of pliers I'm learning to use to make actual curves in wire - the old pliers were a different size and so I'm re-learning... I will try to post a longer post at least once this week.

Today making art involved staying in my pyjamas, testing out my oral diffusion technique on the bathroom tiles, figuring out that apparently there's a physics link between diffusing fixative and flying a plane, waiting for thing after thing to dry, looking up my Thesaurus and casting Runes.

I started with an image transfer using one of my own Hare photos. Whilst that was drying, I got my Conté crayons out and used another of my photos as a guide to create the larger Hare face. Whilst the fixative was drying, I  created the words and collaged them, along with the Hare. I coloured and blended using a mix of Conté crayons, pastels, watercolour Graphitint pencils, ink and art markers. I suck at lettering, but it's decades since I tried to do it :)

Also today - that moment when you pour water onto your green tea bag and discover it has a hole in it. Then you remember that you purloined the tea strainer for use with chemicals in the art room - because no-one ever needs the tea strainer....

I decided many years ago to invent myself. I had obviously been invented by someone else, by a whole society, and I didn't like their invention. ~ Maya Angelou

For many, many years this has been one of my favourite quotes. I love the power behind it and the declaration of self-definition. It was a great comfort to know that someone else had the same feelings that I did that there was a chasm between what society thinks I am, and what I feel I am. I cried when I read that Maya Angelou had passed beyond the veil, to me she was one of those women who are Mothers to all of us.

Angelou's words also resonate with my readings of Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés - the idea that as you grow up you lose the connection with your inner self and start to wear masks and take on roles that leave you feeling diminished.

I find I am constantly changing and reinventing parts of myself, but that every once in a while I either embark upon, or find myself in the middle of, a more profound period of change. I embrace new things, or I set myself free from something I have felt is binding me, or I let go of a leg trap, or I retreat inward for a while. I can't pinpoint where the current phase began, for me the process is more like the tides than some linear journey with an end and a beginning , but this post is a beginning. 

Taexalia