No More Turtle Time

I love the quote an artist friend of mine posted in her comment about my "Raindancing" post:  "Behold the turtle.  He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out."--- James Bryant Conant.

It certainly speaks to what I've been up to these past months - holed up in my "turtle shell"!  It's been a good place and a bad place to be for me.  I won't bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say, major changes happened in my life two years ago.  The quick version is: I had a major health issue, the studio that I and four other artists had been operating out of for many,many years suddenly closed, we all had to relocate here and there, which destroyed our artists' community and to top it all off, my mother died the same month we were forced out of the studios.  And if it couldn't get any more depressing, my absolute favorite aunt/artist (my mother's sister) died in the following months.  Needless to say, my life was suddenly in a turmoil....  and that's the Cliff Notes version.  I tried to stay connected to my artist-self, but I couldn't.  It felt like I was scrambling on top of marbles, trying to get some sort of foothold but didn't know what to "step on".  It's only been recently that I've started to feel "human" again, to tell the truth.  Separating myself from my art and hiding out in the garden I think has been therapeutic to some extent, but I feel like I've "lost" something along the way and it worries me a bit.

So, it's time to poke my head out of this shell and look around, see where I want to go and plan how I'm going to get there.  My first stop is Maui.  Not a bad place to get started from, eh?  I intend to produce something everyday.  I don't know if I'll be able to post my work, but maybe I'll be able to... we'll see.  I'll be there during the Maui Plein Air Painting Invitational - a week long event that brings together 25 of Hawaii's and the mainland's top plein-air painters to paint the beauty of Maui.  It culminates in the Maui No Ka 'Oi Magazine Gala Reception at the end of the week.  During the week, all of us visitors, tourists, and locals will be able to watch them as they paint around the island.  I'm so excited! What an opportunity!