We are back from a long Memorial Day weekend! While enjoyable, it just feels SO GOOD to be home again, and home for the entire week! YAY! I have several projects to share with you as I ‘regroup’ and enjoy my ‘staycation’ as I call it! Cooking, sewing! Perhaps some gardening if… it… ever… stops… raining, and warms up to 70 degrees! Yikes!
Below is a ‘snapshot’ if you will, of some helpful advice, in part by a quilter, Laura Cater Woods. I’ve added my own ‘testimony’ to it, as well. The pictures are mine, the advice is timeless. And I teach and say these very things.
When I teach, I sometimes hear students remark, who look at my free motion quilting, and say I must have an ever-abundant, natural talent for art, that just spills out of me like a waterfall in the spring! Don’t get me wrong, I believe God has filled me up with this blessing. I have always felt it as a youngster… but I know, even more importantly, (perhaps even more so as an adult!) that creativity is something I think about, study, WORK and PLAY at! Daily! And I’m often heard telling my students that very thing! Repeatedly!
Dahlia bloom — from the first plant of the season… yet to be planted!
What advice do you have for artists who are seeking their unique voice or direction in their own artwork? Do the work. Do a lot of work. Look at art, listen to music, see live performances in areas outside your particular focus. Read. Do more work.(Laura Cater Woods).
Detail from mixed media paper quilt
Go make something.
From our Montana Roadtrip Summer 2010 on the back roads to White Sulpher Springs
See something.
“Going to the Sun” Road in Glacier National Park, Montana
Do enough work to make a lot of mistakes. I like that particular sentence… ALOT! You gain nothing if you risk nothing. So, take a Risk. Approach it as Play. Sit quietly for a few minutes every day and just watch the light change.
Mountain flowers. Rocks. Rusty color. What a great combination… and inspiration!
Pay attention. Take in the details. Stop! Be quiet. Absorb.
Ft. Benton, Montana on the banks of the Missouri River
Just do the work. Do it when you are inspired, and especially when you are not. Something will bubble up.
