I have started painting again. Every time I find it is so hard to break through all the early falters, and finally birth new art. This is one of my first new paintings in over a year, Burning Woman… the lost archetype of the feminine to whom my new book is an ode.

I have also found that the images in my writing need to find form in my painting – the two are intimately interlinked. My journal is full of sketches – not of any skill – but visual representations of the energetics and symbols that my writing explores. I find if I am stuck at a crucial point in one medium, I need to move over to the other. If I am stuck in both, I need to show up here to the blog! Each has the power to get the creative flow moving again in a different way… but I am a slow learner, and still I resist and try to figure it out by worrying about it, or by doing the same thing…

So I was going through my archives today, as I work the new book, looking for seeds and clues in past pieces of writing and found this. It’s still so true of the painting process, three years on, so I thought I’d share it.

Calling you into being

Singing you into life

I do not start with a plan, a vision

Because you are the unknowable destiny.

And so I simply paint,

With faith in my heart

As I wander into the void.

I sing a song with my brush as it caresses the canvas

Colour on colour,

I watch as patterns emerge,

The seeds, the clues.

The narrative emerges in my head, calling the picture into being,

I hear its story on the wind, its images hovering in my minds eye.

But where is the bridge from here to there?

And finally, when I believe I cannot paint,

When the junction of despair has been reached,

I have the chance

To turn home or walk on.

I walk on…

And there, emerging,

The image that always was, though I didn’t have eyes to see.

There all along.

In front of me.

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