Forums, Journals & Studying

I've been giving my art quiet a lot of thought recently.  I use the word recently fairly loosely as actually my thought process has stretched itself painfully over years!  I always feel somehow like a drifter, unable to focus and jumping almost randomly from one thing to the next.  My depression and, well, my life seems to get in my way a vast amount of the time and I've seemingly ended up back at the start line again (or behind it)

If I slow down for a while and allow myself to imagine that in everything there is a plan and I don't always, in my wisdom see the bigger picture, then just maybe I'm still on course to wherever it is I'm headed!

My friendships on Facebook have almost accidentally led me to open my own forum today! I have to smile, ME, the person who doesn't know the first thing about the technicalities of the web has her own forum!

It's called healing art journals and is, you won't be surprised to learn a place for us to explore the relationship between art journaling and emotional, mental and physical healing. It's a subject I'm passionate about and at the same time realise fairly ignorant about.  So if you want to head over there looking for some kind of enlightened guru you might be looking in the wrong place.  I'm simply an explorer willing to learn and hoping to do just that with like-minded people.  I expect to fall sometimes along the way and I hope there will be others there to pick me up, dust me off and cheer me on!  Healing is something we could all use in different degrees and this new journey both excites and scares me.

I intend to record most of what I'm doing here and on my flickr also.  I expect there will be some things that I'm not perhaps ready to share and that will be OK but I want it to be as honest as possible because I know without honesty there will be little growth.

If you'd like to join in, I'd welcome you!  I'm not intending necessarily for there to be great mater pieces to critique, that's not what it's about.  Some of the pages probably may stay unfinished as in life, they will be works in progress waiting for the next chapter.  I'm not aiming for correct form, or colour or correct anything.  This is about feeling, connecting, working out and listing, observing, noticing the patterns life draws and learning from them into freedom.

If you'd like to watch it unfolding or to write your own chapter you can follow me here or come over to the forum and say hi.  I'd love to sit a while and drink coffee with you and talk about your day.

Healing Art Journals

One of the books I'm reading just now is Art Journals & Creative Healing.  I've only just started this book and I also have the tendency to dip into more than one book at a time but the photographs of other artists journals are inspirational and I intend to use some of the ideas in my own journal which I will post as I go along.  You can see more of this lovely book and others reviews on Amazon by clicking the link below.