Sunny Flowers and Shade

Sunny Flowers and Shade
Mixed Media on Vintage Book Page

Hi all. Still here. Sorry for not posting lately. Still funking over here, but that's not the only thing. The economy has hit us kind of hard and worried creep up. I also don't have as much access to the computer as I did before and not as much time to work. Plus I'm not really feeling creatively inspired.

It got me to thinking.

What do we do when we are in a time of constraint? When the motion that was happening before seems to choke up and slow down?

It would be very easy to get cranky and sulky. I can't deny that I don't do that sometimes. But it really isn't a productive way to deal with constraints. Frankly, it just makes you feel worse.

So when I was being cranky and not really liking what I was painting and not really wanting to paint anything anyway and feeling sulky that I had to share my computer time and all around just kind of grumpy, I thought I'd just try something new.

Well, not new. Old. I took out one of my old loose book pages, torn from the altered book I did years ago. In fact, a page that I had already started drawing on... if you look closely, you'll see the outline of a hand and a few words within the petals that have been circled. I drew my Mother's Day flowers on the page and fussed and fussed with it until I found it was acceptable.

So here's what I made within my constraints. Something loose. Something that wasn't defined before I went in, but was allowed to grow of it's own accord. I let myself mess up and just painted on another layer.

Sometimes, I think dealing with our constraints as they are helps us to be more creative. We have to search for new avenues to take, new uses of old things, ways to make our limits into freedom.

I have no answer for getting out of constraints that are too tight. I only have ways of making the constraints not feel quite so constraining.

ps This also fits the "Petal" prompt for Inspire Me Thursday.