progress is slow

i mentioned last time that i received a gigantic canvas for christmas this year.  the day after christmas i had to bail from a family gathering due to depression and anxiety and felt like the worst person on the planet for doing so.  the next day i started sketching what i hope to be a healing work for me.

she is incredibly sad and vulnerable but her light still has a glow to it.  she does not want the guilt and responsibility of 'living because others need her'.  she needs to find her own joy in living again.  she's tentative and protective of her flame, scared it will be snuffed out. she needs to keep herself and her little light safe but knows your own light, and the light of the world, shines brighter if you share your flame with others.  

on new years day our kids and grands came to play games instead of our annual movie marathon.  i just could not come up with movies i wanted to watch.  it needed to be lighthearted, thats all i knew.  in the end, i just decided on a game day.

here 'we' are playing our new game "labyrinth".  

i ended up just watching the game play that day

 my yearly january ritual of pulling a card for every month proved interesting and gave me some hope.  i need 2 more decks to bring my total to 12, one for each month!

i will read each months card reading on the first of each month for insight

i'm waiting for a shipment of some paint to be delivered to me, cause i don't have enough of the right colors to cover this whole canvas.  trying to be patient, here.  i had an idea about collage-ing the whole background full of this girls 'story' before painting the background, but i put a few pieces down and decided to collage only the orb she carries and just a few odd papers here and there on the background.

as i collaged the papers in the orb, parts of it became sort of a conversation between winter-orion and myself... my grief speaking and winter speaking to my grief.  it was pretty cool and felt good.

this is the soul, the part of you that makes you, you.  

your memories and thoughts, the important parts of life

now i am thinking about how it will all play out, how i want it to be, how i can try to get the effects i would like to see, tossing things out there in my head and hoping it comes out ok in the end.  it's all an experiment.  the work of painting sometimes happens well before paint even enters the studio.

speaking of the studio...  it is wicked cold here in massachusetts and set to be even colder this weekend, wind-chills said to get down to -35 degrees F.  i've been turning on the heater down there in order to piddle around, and one night forgot to turn it off until the next evening.  when i went to turn it off, it hadn't gotten above 44 degrees!  i won't be painting down there anytime soon.  right now i'm set up in our sitting room, and plan on just being as tidy as i can with the drips.  

as soon as my paint is delivered.

until later,

jenny