Ready to Fly

Watercolor feathers, awaiting more delicate details

These are wings for this "denim and dirt" heart collage

I haven't worked in my watercolors for a while; it's taking some practice to get used to them again!

The first-draft feathers. Decided they won't work for the final piece, but I can't wait to cut them up for a collage!

My mama-heart has been crowding out my creative-heart lately and I'm finding it difficult to shift my focus. Usually I thrive on the chaos that comes with being a work-at-home artist-mama. These last three--almost four (!)--years I have been squeezing it in during naptimes and snacktimes, slowly taking baby-steps in developing a body of work, defining my style, filling and fine-tuning my Etsy shop, building a blog...all the while knowing that none of it truly could take off yet because it wasn't quite yet "my time." 

Rest is probably one of the topics I have revisited most often since I started this blog a year and a half ago (you can read some of those posts here, here, here and here). It seems I am always wishing to speed ahead to the finish line instead of enjoying each leg of the race--or, even better, to realize that the race is a myth and that the beautiful journey is the thing that matters--that the story itself is the goal. 

Well, for once, I feel like I'm not trying to jump ahead.

I love this blog, I love my reader-friends and I love my work. But my little girls are both starting part-time kindergarten in just a few weeks (in Germany, this is sort of like preschool, or maybe more like playschool). A new chapter is about to begin for our little family as the two youngest members test their tiny wings for the very first time. So I am savoring these last few "pages" of summer as much as I can.

My heart is aching just a little because I know this is the first of many "leavings" to come. (Although my three-year old would tilt her head at me right now and ask, "Are you cryin' again, Mama? We will always be with you--in your heart and still living in this apartment too." Ha! And cue even more tears!) My heart is also soaring because soon I will get to spread my own wings a bit more and have time--actual hours-on-end--to work and to discover where this creative life is going to take me! I have lots of plans whirling around in my head, gathering strength like feathers to fill out my wings and lift me in flight. 

And I'm so grateful to all of you out there who are joining me on this adventure; can't wait to write more of the story!

(If you'd like a bit more of the story right now, head on over to the Bettina's Treehouse Blog where Beth Laky featured me in an "Artist Spotlight" interview--check it out here. Thanks Beth! And be sure to visit her shop too, where 25% of her proceeds support LiquidWater.com and the drilling of clean water wells in developing countries. What a beautiful thing.)