When the ocean takes a breath…

Jan 30

This week I finished a big piece that I’ve been working on for quite a while. It’s been a long time coming and now that it’s finished I feel similar to how I do whenever I finish a really good book or tv series. You feel really good, and then immediately start to feel like things are too quiet.

Most of my life I’ve been so notorious for having a minimum of 100 projects going at once that whenever I finished one it never felt any different. I never felt the weight of the space.

With the new year, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I spend my time and what I pour my energy into artistically. I realized that I had so many ideas and projects all going at once that I never felt the space that came from completing a big project, or the energy that came out of pouring everything you have into one project at a time.

I grew up admiring others around me that always seemed to have one thing going, or one thing they had endless energy to pour into and the product that came out of it was truly mind blowing. I always figured that people were different and maybe I just wasn’t born with the skills to be able to work that way. After being diagnosed with ADHD at 32 a lot has changed in my life as far as how I work and what I’m able to move forward.

I never felt like I had a choice in how I worked or what I put energy into until very recently in my life.

And now that I have the validation, support and tools I need to move things forward the way I never thought I would get to, I’ve really wanted to focus my energy on where I want The Grizzled Moon to go in 2023. And who I want to be as an artist. I’ve been auditing my life one section at a time, thanking and letting go of what no longer gives me life and letting myself sit in the charged space of creativity after a big project like this gets checked off of the schedule.

I bought a fresh wall calendar that shows the whole year at a glance, and filled it with new collections, originals and goal projects for the coming year. I’ve never felt so excited about the quiet space that comes from completing a big project, it feels like the ocean is taking a breath before the next waves of ideas come crashing down on my sketchpad.

The next project to come is the “Fractal Wilds Collection,” my first full collection of woodburned originals being released on February 28th. I’m over the moon to take the space I need to fully lean in to this collection and everything I want it to be for the month ahead.