An update.

 

    I've been on a three and a half week pet sitting run, which has given me lots of time to stitch together pieces of indigo dyed fabric that I made in preparation for a new series of paintings. 

        I've already made one of these paintings and I have delivered it to Downtown Books and News in Downtown Asheville where I have my paintings for sale. 

    I love doing this hand stitching. I find it so fulfilling. It's amazing how something so simple as hand-stitching can quiet my mind, bring me into the present moment and feel totally satisfying. I think that things like this that are craft-based, not intellectual-based, are part of our biology. I often consider how women all over the world, in every single culture, throughout all of history have been doing this. There is something about it that I think is fundamental to our well-being. 

    I'm super excited about this new series of paintings. I feel my creative flow coming back into my body and filling me up and I have all these ideas of what I want to do. After a year and a half of feeling artistically and creatively blocked, I am so grateful to feel excited about my art again. 

    At the same time, it's been a challenging week for other reasons. Friendships have been hard for me all my life. Whenever I look at the list of results of growing up with abuse, having trouble holding on to friendships is always on the list. Low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence is usually at the top. I resonate with all of these things. There are many reasons that I think might contribute to my challenges with friendships, but I'll just say here that this week has been hard. I am pretty sure I have been rejected by a dear friend whose friendship I treasure. When I wake up in the morning, the moment I regain consciousness, my body feels weighted down by a dark, heavy feeling and I remember what has happened. Shame, confusion, bewilderment and grief have all been my constant companions this past week. 

    I am working on self-acceptance, self-belonging, self-love. Giving myself all the things I didn't get enough of as a child and often look for in others. Being estranged from my family makes friendships have more weight. It's like I have been looking for a family to belong to all my life. At the same time, I am also grateful for the support and love and friendships I do have, and even when they don't last, I'm grateful for the friendships I have had. Maybe sometimes it's healthy for a friendship to end or for it to have a long break, even if it doesn't always make sense to me.

    The video below is my latest YouTube video. I don't get a lot of comments, but I still like sharing what I'm up to. In a way it feels like a way to connect with a larger community from a distance.

    For some reason, I have this deep desire to be very open and vulnerable in the way that I put myself out there into the world through my business and creativity. Maybe I am trying to make the whole world be my family. Maybe it's a practice of self-acceptance. I included me talking about the Declaration of Independence in this video and how the country I live in is founded on genocide. I don't know if this will turn people off. Probably some people will be on the same page as me and others might be offended. I know I'm not the only person who has this perspective, which is comforting. 

    I feel like I am still experimenting with making videos and I'm not totally sure still how to weave together all the things that I'm trying to do with them. I have this vision in my mind of making a dress out of the same fabric that I'm using to make this painting series and then painting a portrait on it and then going to some beautiful natural place and filming myself in the dress, possibly with the painting stretched in between trees. I think that would be so beautiful. I have done something similar before. At the Burren College of Art, I made a dress that matched my paintings.

    Also, I made a series of paintings for a festival called The Wild Goose Festival and had them photographed tied to trees in the woods.

    I'm imagining some combination of these things. I also want to make a video about a place I loved going in New Mexico called "White Rock". There was a trail that went down into the the Rio Grande canyon. It was so beautiful and I went there often whenever I felt upset or stressed or just wanted to be epically inspired. It felt like a friend to me. Every time I went, there was some different magical thing that would happen to make me feel wrapped in a warm embrace. The full moon, huge and rising right in front of me just coming up from the horizon. Or a swarm of sand hill cranes swooping around overhead. A lightening storm in the distance. If I was in New Mexico I would have visited there often this week. 

    Thank you for reading. Feel free to leave a comment. I hope you feel blessed and healed as you go along in your own journey.

Peace,

Suzanne.