The Vein of Gold series

This series of works got you guys on social media all fired up, and I absolutely positively LOVED making them - flowy rivers of blendable colour pencils…, scraping grooves into paper…, then pulling an ink wash roughly over the top?

Bring it😏

So how did these works come about?🤔🤔🤔 Well, I’ve had to mind my mental health forever, and one helpful tool is practicing easy creative recovery from books like ‘The Artist’s Way’, ‘The Vein of Gold’ (both by Julia Cameron) and ‘The Artist’s Journey’ by Nancy Hillis, M.D. Should these books be on prescription? Probably - they allow us to go deeply into creativity, or simply dip a toe 👣

Making these marks calms my busy mind, and I bet you can see that the grooves are SO VERY satisfying to make! 😌 These scrapes and grooves reflect my struggle in the making process and, heck, in life 😎 The doubt, the questions, the need to get it ‘right’ whatever that means - you know what I’m talking about?

Boy but these pieces connected DEEPLY with you instagram folks, where you responded with excitement, so thank you kindly.

For me, each stroke feels like catharsis, shining a gentle light on doubt, and watching it dissipate, like water drying up. Slowly the shapes show up, the colours reveal themselves, and the gold shows up ⚜️

I feel proud of both of these works, and I am releasing their originals and prints in late summer 2023 ☀️😎