I was so excited for this color. It is, after all, my favorite one. Growth. Newness. New life. I’m typically always up for trying something new. The excitement and mystery that can come with newness has almost always made me more comfortable with change than most people. I see growth as creation. The act that is most organic to us as humans: creating. Not everyone likes to think of themselves as a “creative”, but I think everybody has the capacity, just maybe not the exposure or practice to see themselves as a creative, yet. It’s like a room in your house you just haven’t spent much time in. Or other times I talk to people that don’t think of themselves as creative, yet they are business owners, homemakers, and really good with creating systems. That’s all creating. Absolutely.
I continued the mark making series, this time in Green. Marker this time. Not as exciting as pastel, because I realized I didn’t even have anymore green pastel. And I played around with the idea of inverting a flower, with the color green as the show stopper color for the petals. At this time of year it is easy to immerse myself in my current color. All the lush leaves and greenery are not hard to find. I found myself going out of my way to be among the green a bit more than usual.
Ironically, I started a project with very not-alive flowers that were part of a dried bouquet. A friend asked me to do a shadowbox with her vows and her dried wedding bouquet. Sure, why not! A bit of a learning curve, but I was happy with the finished product and most importantly my friend was, too. Another project I did was a small painting in which I only used green paints. I started it while I was outside in the greenery of the woods.
This project is special because of where the idea came from. This painting is a small part a prayer, a most part a documentation for remembrance, and another small part a process of grief. It’s kinda crazy that in my green season in this rainbow year, this two month window, I found myself pregnant. A literal new life. It was a very surreal experience. Wes and I were grateful, excited, and then floored when I started bleeding. We miscarried. I’ve experienced many types of loss in my 30 years here, and this was my second time experiencing this type of loss. It was different this time. It happened earlier on than my second pregnancy. The event felt quieter this time, because not many people knew we were expecting. Alongside the sadness and other assumed emotions to belong to this sort of thing, I found myself grateful. That surprised me. I couldn’t get away from the weight that I was blessed to carry that life. It felt like a gift. Short lived, but significant all the same. I’m still not sure if this image I saw in my heart that I tried to put on canvas, was the child we never got to meet or if it is a possible future kid that hope is holding. I guess time will tell.
One last share from my green season, I found myself in Sweden. Long story, so make sure to check back for my travel blog about it, but I snapped this photo. You get it. Just had to.