Dear Friends,It has been far too long since my last posting, I know. Time has just flown by! There is so much to say it is hard to know where to begin.
Firstly- "All is well". I think it is especially important to remember this simple phrase when everything can feel overwhelming as it often does these days.
This spring didn't really happen for us in this part of the northern forests, despite how it looks in this photo of a rather festive Faerie house all decked out in glorious blossoms. This was taken on one of the very rare sunny days we had early in the month. Mostly it has been grey, damp and cool. Perfect for the mosses and mushrooms, but not so great for making Faeriehouses with flowers. Sadly, most of the spring passed by this year without being able to work with the usual flowers, they were just too wet and passed their prime in just a day or two rather than the normal week or so for each variety. So it has been challenging for me to do my creative work. The local farmers however had it much worse. I think everyone in this area is feeling uneasy about things because it has been a spring unlike any we have ever seen before with so much water. Everyone is cranky, edgy and trying to figure out how to cope with the rapidly changing conditions. Planting time was seriously delayed and many of us have only just gotten our gardens in... 3-4 weeks behind schedule. Everyone is affected by the changes and not sure how to reconnect to the feelings of joy that the warm seasons used to bring.
Now, we are into the summer cycle, according to the calendar and Solstice, but it doesn't feel much different! Fortunately I have have many projects going on indoors and those have taken on lives of their own, but here too unpredictability has been the norm. Various pieces of equipment have needed repair or upgrading and not just one or two. All this slows down the work and makes it hard to keep momentum going, but one does the best one can.
On a very positive note, the new line of Greeting cards have been printed and I finally got the proofs a week or so ago. They look wonderful. Now I'm working with my fabulous web designer, Jennifer Star and we are putting together the new pages to share all these great new images with all of you. I have 4 new collections of images, 3 of them are all winter-based images. I will show the first set here in the next few days so you can see all the cards here first. I know it is strange to debut winter images a few days after the summer solstice, but that is just how it worked out this year!
The book project continues to progress...but I have not been able to work on it as much as I had hoped these past three weeks because of a flurry of requests for special projects and photo submission deadlines that had to be met. But those are now finished and I'll be back to the editing and layout process. I'm also attempting to write some thoughts about my work for the book, but so far I am not happy with any of it. It is a challenge we artists face sometimes... putting in many, many hours into something only to realize that what we've done is unusable. It can be very discouraging if it goes on for a long time and this spring seems to have been epic for devoting endless time to things that turn out to not be what I expected or hoped for. This is the real gritty part of being an artist... sticking with it when it isn't flowing smoothly, but then I remember : "All is well" and that brings a smile and onward I go.
So I will be sharing the new cards here over the next few days and will be catching up with some other bits of news from around the studio and from this beautiful green world here that is incredibly lush, thanks to all the rains!
I hope the sun is shining wherever you are today!
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