I Choose To

The theme of this year's National Chronic Invisible Illness Week is "I Choose To" and one of my choices is to always be emerging from the cocoon, seeking the new and extraordinary, finding and using wings that had been dormant, not settling for a life spent crawling. Well, not all the time. I wake up and wait to see how I'm going to feel for the day and more often than not it's so-so, meaning, no errands, social events or major chores. So, I choose to go to the studio, put on my headphones and blast my fight songs - Rage Against the Machine, Led Zeppelin, Three Days' Grace, Rolling Stones, Tool, well, you get the idea. And then I gesso a page, prepare for takeoff...

I most always start out with a layer of texture - paper, trim, stuff that will give my page depth. By then I usually have a photograph in mind and I choose a color palette. Hopefully with one or two colors I haven't used recently. That's when I reach high altitude. Paint on the hands, the artist's manicure, messy, whatever you want to call it, is my favorite state of being. Ever. 

Then, progressing to the 'put it all together' in a cohesive way stage takes me into bins, drawers, bags and stashes, exploring and in search of the elements that make my heart sing. Or fly. And after I've glued everything down, I use Pan Pastels to touch the piece with color, make it pop. And when I land I'm sitting in the exact same spot but have traveled through worlds of color, texture, music, depth, insight and love.