my newest hobby

Painting is now and will forever be my first love. I simply adore painting. But lately I've found a new art form to keep me busy. 

It began with a pretty camera to take photos of my paintings. Then spring came and I started hiking. So naturally I began taking some photos of trees for reference. You know, angles, bark, lighting that kind of thing. And then i started to notice little things. Things that were interesting. Things that i wanted to share. 

Now its a challenge to look harder for the amazing things mother nature has to offer. 
Sometimes its easy, and sometimes .... a lot of times actually, a bit frustrating.

 But defiantly rewarding when i can find something beautiful. Ive seen a few spectacular photos. They seem to capture life, light, motion and emotion. A piece of nature frozen to look upon forever. How lucky and inspired one must be, to be in the right place at the right time. 

My life seems to be filled with adventure. At least that's what i like to call the lovely little things life likes to give me... adventures. This weekend I'm off to Fairbanks. Trust me I'm cringing. It seems my latest adventure requires a move there. I never made it to Valdez and I'm thrilled. But it seems a move in my life is unavoidable. (right now your asking yourself: is there a point to this?) There is! I will be going to the midnight sun festival where i will be surrounded by art of all kinds. At least that's what I'm told. So hopefully, i will have captured something amazing, something inspiring, something worth an amazing blog;) 
I have high hopes for this city I'm about to call home, for my new hobby, and for getting better at the whole blog thing. Because honestly, i can't keep rambling forever. 

Writers ROCK!

Im not a writer, not even a little bit. I cant even manage to write my true feelings in a journal, let alone for other people to read. Writers, real writers (and thats anyone other than me) amaze me.

Alot of my paintings stem from songs. I love songs. I love how someone, put their feelings into words. Painted a picture of their heart without even picking up a brush. Whether its a song, book, letter, greeting card im always amazed by the stringing of words like pearls on a necklace. The imagery is sometimes so powerful that i cant help but be inspired. 

One of my absolute favorite mental images comes from Sarah Jarosz. Its called Run Away. If you haven't given it a listen, i strongly suggest you do. The line that truly gets me is "I buried my heart in a willow tree, you came along and gave it back to me." Love Love Love!!!!


Nora Jones is another favorite of mine. The Painter Song and Come Away With Me are two other songs my brain is determined to come up with an image that does them justice. Needless to say, im in love with painting from songs. 


And then there are books. Lovely lovely books. I have a fantastic friend, Jolene b. Perry that writes uber fun ya books. I dont know how she does it. I have no idea how she can take a thought and turn it into an actual story with a plot and people that you adore just by being inside their head. 


One of my favorite books for imagery is The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. In this book, a young girl deals with the grief of loosing her older sister by writing poems and leaving them all over town. I promise its not a downer like it sounds. Just deeply moving. It has wonderful characters that leave you smiling. My favorite passage from this one: 

"Grief is a house where the chairs have forgotten how to hold usthe mirrors how to reflect usthe walls how to contain usGrief is a house that dissapearseach time someone knocks at the dooror rings the bella house that blows into the airat the slightest gustthat buries itself deep in the groundwhile everyone is sleepingGrief is a house where no one can protect youwhere the younger sisterwill grow older than the older onewhere the doorsno longer let you inor out"

OH MY! I can already see the picture id paint. My mind spins in circles trying to figure out how id get the effects i want to portray. What an amazing poem! How many times have we lost a loved one or had  life change us so dramatically  to find our grief ready to consume us? I have more times then I'm willing to admit.

So my question today: What words move you?