Lots & Lots of 'Blank Pages'

I have just discovered that there are lots of 'blank pages' out there. Does this suggest people's states of mind. Most 'blank pages' are of course connected to creative ventures...

When I began this particular blog it was for a couple of reasons - one because I wanted a vehicle for my creative journey and the other was I wanted to play with this medium... I guess I wanted a 'working model' so that I could learn as I went along. I still feel very much a 'babe in the woods' and I wonder how other people feel especially the older age group where this is not a 'genetic skill' but rather a 'learned necessity' if we are to even have a look in. Me, I have trouble with anything that suggests more than a 'go' and 'stop' capacity. Although I do want an ipod - it is one of the first things I have really wanted. Nifty little idea. I loved my walkman when I first got it. But again I digress...

So I would like to evolve the blank page - that was my intention from the beginning, to begin with a blank space and then slowly bring it to colour - both here and off line...

I have thought more about my faces project... My trouble I think is that I want to 'fly' rather than 'crawl'... I am impatient with having to learn the basics so I 'can do'. I am now seeing things everywhere - a face in a magazine has me looking at it from a textile sense - using fabric to define light and shade.

I have rediscovered my prismcolour pencils and take them from their 'sleeping place' in the desk draw... As I look at there I see the soft and oil pastels, the paints etc... All neatly packed away and largely unused... It is time for my neat ordered life to have a bit of a 'bump'... A colour explosion... I think back to a shirt I bought years and years ago - the reason I loved it was the same reason I hated it - it was too colourful!!!!! Again it takes me back to the time when I sought the assistance of a career counselor... I saw a Margaret Preston print on her wall and commented about it - then we spoke about my career goals - social/welfare work and how I oscillated between one idea and another, undecided. Towards the end of the session after we had talked around my dilemma she asked if she could make a comment about when I first arrived. She then went onto say how when I had seen the print my face had lit up and I was animated and I spoke with passion but when the session begun and I spoke about what I thought I 'should do' and I became quite subdued. She also made the ventured the suggestion - had I thought about art as a career - I remember looking at her like she was talking about someone else. If she had suggested that I become a tight rope walker I couldn't have been more shocked. Interesting...

It has taken me to this age to begin to see that I confused art with being perfect, 'good at it' or technique. Now I am seeing that it is about creating, exploring and seeing things in different ways. I have come to understand why I like impressionist art - its sense of freedom. I have only ever seen the restriction in doing art - not the freedom.

When I look over across to the park I see the trees as moving forms of light and dark, the bark as textured whorls of abyss and ridges. I watch the light touch the leaves and play among the branches, leaving whole areas shaded while other are brought to life.

All my life I have been surrounded by a creative family, but especially my parents were 'slaves' to the God of Perfection. I have always known I walked to the sound of a slightly different drum and I am beginning to think that my beat was perhaps a little more 'irregular'. I believe I have always seen art in the light of as something you did when you have DONE everything else...

When I was a young woman - just out of school - I wanted to go to art school - but I went to work instead. To this day if I see people carrying art folios I wonder what they are doing, where they are going...

Deep within I have always had an itch I couldn't scratch and a thirst that wouldn't satisfy but I never linked it with the obvious. Why is it we don't see what we are literally tripping over under our noses?

Perhaps this time of discovery is my watershed. I have struggled over the last couple of years with the 'big questions' - wanting answers - perhaps now I am receiving them. And I am ready to acknowledge the wisdom that they might bring...