Dark to Dawn

Histories, assemblage by Donna Watson

I'm back.  Some of you may have noticed that my blog posts have been on a long hiatus.  After 2 years of health issues, I have spent the past several months trying to change my life style including diet, mediation and yoga.  All these changes have taken much of my energy and focus so my short hiatus turned into a much longer unplanned break from the blog world.  

I have also tried to get back into my art work, and studio and this strong effort also proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

Identity, collage by Donna Watson

 

"A time of bleakness can also be a time of pruning.  Sometimes when our minds are dispersed and

scattered, this pruning cuts away all of the false branching where our passion and energy were leaking out.  While it is painful to experience and endure this, a new focus and clarity emerge."

      ---- John O'Donahue,  Beauty:  The Invisible Embrace:   "The Lost Voice"

 

Identity 2, collage by Donna Watson

 

And in my new found focus, energy and desire to get back to work in my studio, I focussed on the trees and did not see the forest.  I concentrated on techniques and mediums and what I wanted to

paint, which only led to more frustrations.  I forgot why I wanted to paint.

 

Promise me

You will not spend

so much time

treading water

and trying to keep your

head above the waves

that you forget, 

truly forget,

how much you have

always loved to swim.

--- Tyler Knott Gregson

 

".... all progress must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything.  Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.  To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark.... and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity:  that alone is living the artist's life, in understanding as in creating."

   --- Rainer Maria Rilke