New Year’s Eve of 2021 (31-12-2020)

Looking forward to new chapters in my life in a new year of my life.

It has been so long since my last post and so much has happened since 2017.

Many people I loved have left this earth and new members of the family have arrived into my life. The promise of new beginnings has such a tantilising excitement for me …I am finding it hard to sit still and concentrate on one task at a time. All I can do is rejoice that I have the opportunity to make a difference in the world, in my own space, my family space and hopefully in the wider community.

2020

I plunged headlong into tending my garden over the last year as a source of enjoyment and distraction from the ugly world of Covid.

I survived a long drawn out lockdown, the harshest lockdown of any state in my country and some say the world. Covid continues to rear its ugly head whilst we are caught napping on the job it seems.

Continued to do my creative journalling and set myself a task to do a 5 min small drawing every day to use my creative brain before switching sides to the analytical, admin brain for work purposes. This task was extremely enjoyable, some “quickies” as I call them on my Instagram account were successful in my eyes and made me wonder at the drawings i produced. Other drawings were failures, again in my own eyes, but they have shown me that sometimes less is more! The process of drawing was also key to exercising muscle memory in the creative process. Later in that process I moved from black and white images to colour, I think I do have a preference for black and white though.

2019 May.

I challenged myself to become more creative after a holiday into a beautiful part of my country, Port Douglass and the Great Barrier Reef. There I saw first hand the beauty of the tropical rain forests and the exquisite reefs teaming with all manner of beautiful sea creatures. I was reminded of the delicate balance between humans and Mother Nature.

I experienced a beautiful sunset cruise on a sailing boat that invigorated me and took me back to fond experiences of sailing in my youth.

So when I returned from my refreshing holiday I started creative journalling. Every month I chose a theme and designed my journal around that theme, digging deep to find my drawing skills and creative juices. I also started dabbling in water-colour painting. This has led to a love of painting i wish i had found many years ago when I had the opportunity to check out a prominent watercolourist in the region of NSW I lived in. Unfortunately circumstances were not ideal and the opportunity was lost.