Learning from Observation Experiment:
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| Inspired by the Sydney Botanical Gardens |
This past month I gave myself permission to go buy paints. I've had paints in the past - tubes of oils, acrylics, watercolors - but they disappeared over the years. I can now see what I told myself: "I'm not a painter, that's not my medium for my creativity." Until about two years ago, I think that internal messaging also told me that I didn't need pens, pencils, charcoal because drawing also wasn't part of my creative repertoire anymore. That message changed when I found myself spending a month wandering through the Sydney Botanical Gardens. I bought a small purse sized sketch book and a black ink pen, spending hours in the park drawing trees and flowers.
Maybe my experience in Sydney was what started to crack me wide open to possibility. I was tagging along with my husband's work trip. He had to spend a month in Sydney - and I set out on foot through out the city each day. My work is project based and over that month, I had cleared out my deadlines because I hadn't been sure what my ability to connect would be. All the usual ways that I would distract myself were not as available - so I walked. I went to museums. I rode the subway, I took the bus out to Material Obsessions (Kathy Dougherty's fabric shop), and I went to the Botanical Gardens. I bought my sketch book. I took pictures. I drew lines and patterns. After looking at many indigenous artworks, I drew more lines a more patterns. I read about the stories in the patterns and began wondering what was my story to tell. What were my themes of living life? What draws me back again and again? I started reading about how these themes are embedded in fabric, quilts, thread. What was it that kept bringing me back to the Botanical Gardens?
Sydney was over two years ago and it has felt like that crack widened into a stream of exploration. My work with clients over the years has often encompassed helping them connect the dots of their lived experience with aspirations of how they want to live their lives - and as Kelly has said, its about the incremental steps that simply put us on a path. Walking this path into our future selves is the creative life. For myself, I've put myself back into learner's mode. I attended my first quilting conference, learned new skills, dove in head first and wallowed in color, texture, new insights, wisdom gathered.
And I went to buy paints. I don't need to label whatever reveals itself to me on my new watercolor paper - its an exercise in using a different medium to explore something that I thought I could identify every day of the week. I've discerned what colors I think bracken ferns are in my particular forest - especially when the sunlight hits them in a certain way. I've noticed the pattern of the fronds and then what kinds of fabric and embroidery stitches will bring them to life. It is my own creative study. I've wholeheartedly embraced the process as one that reveal delightful insights as I go along. I anticipate and trust that something that I don't know yet is going to be revealed.