it's january and i awoke with little dreams of the heat of the sun bouncing off the lake and warming my skin the way it does in july. we are so fortunate to have tom's family cottage to enjoy every summer, but i am always hunting for the perfect little lot for us. i love snug and cozy spaces. i remember as a child reading 'little house on the prairie', having great daydreams about the house that pa dug out of the hillside. and our teacher read the hobbit aloud to us in grade 5.....the hobbit's little round rooms intrigued me equally. so when i saw this site www.simondale.net and the brilliant repurposed home they dug from the side of a hill.....my cottage dreams were launched into hyperdrive (i've been watching way too much star wars over the break with flynn & jee & tom).
curving plaster and barky branches...so safe and cozy and tree-like. and real. there is something so complete and true about this structure. it seeps deep into who i am.
so as the snow swirls weakly around my window this morning, i plan for my little summer nest in the woods by a lake.....and head to the studio to continue with real life.

as i sit with my tea this morning my mind is all tangled up in the complexities of accomplishment. the last few days i've been going on about my personal shifts. they aren't shifts as much as u-turns, or more accurately, S-turns. looking back as much as forward. many years of making and selling. there is a calm sense of simplicity that my life demands. i chose it. i love what i do, but i think i haven't been doing it entirely.
there was the time i thought that being an artist was my destiny. but, after years of mucking around in the paint, i knew that being an artist of the new york gallery variety, wasn't for my life. i didn't thrive on the tortured, driven scramble it demanded. but i painted regardless. i had no intention of selling my paintings, i just had to paint. but i also made specific marketable items to sell. two entirely distinct ventures. the items i sell have always varied. but have always been very aesthetically different from my fine art sensibilities.
and now i am finding the blend happening. it's like the two sides of me that i've built a barrier between for decades, are beginning to break into each other, and possibly swirl comfortably together. i feel the urge to concentrate less on what my practical self tells me will sell, but rather what my artist self tells me to make.
so off i go across the yard to get to work.....

there is a shiver in me. anxious and happy and excited to get to the studio. to organize and work and watch what comes from my first full day back. there is so much i'm moving back to this year. the core that i moved away from years ago to make money, is lurching back in. i know that i can make it all work in a smooth and artful motion. and although i know it's right, i'm feeling a little cramped and slightly paniced. maybe that's the anxious feeling....i'm running out of room.
so i wait for edgar to finish his breakfast. i drink a morning coffee with stella curled carefully on my knee. and the new year with all it's challenges stretches before me.

it has been a wonderful week. i have puttered around the house. cleaning and organizing. throwing out the unneeded junk we accumulate and donating loads of things to charity shops. but today, i felt the shift. my mind gradually turning back towards the studio as it begins to pulse with new ideas and motivation. strangely, i was just admitting to tracy (through giggling) that my best ideas often come during or after watching any one of the 6 star wars movies. it has happened since the phantom menace came out 12 years ago. while watching it in the cinema, i had a fabulous idea that eventually successfully launched my first business. and this week we've watched 5 of the 6 movies....tom got them on blu-ray for christmas. my theory is that i watch them and enjoy them, but i don't pay much attention beyond the visual, letting my mind drift into it's own idea place and things percolate and digest over the hours the movie takes to watch. and often within the next day something brilliant overtakes me.
for the past 6 or 8 weeks i've felt the lovely soothing monotony of colorless cotton or linen or paper. i immersed myself in color for many years and i am feeling a faded quiet and calm wash across my work now. natural, unbleached. or neutral and earthy. and i feel the potential of painting. i found paintings tonight that i used to do on mylar...sensual and smooth and transparent. i love them. small and engaging and satisfying. and the itch to feel the glide of the brush is growing stronger.
so, on the morrow, i will build the heat and the energy and the startle of idea in the studio again.

the dishes are washing. edgar is fed. we are fed....we had a lovely cabernet-franc jelly on our sprouted grain toast to begin new years eve in style. the fire in the library has a couple of cats clustered around it and i'm feeling nostalgic. i don't like sudden change. i love gradual comfortable shifts. but knowing that in 12 hours i will have no choice but to write a new and unfamiliar year every time i write the date.....it gives me a little start of panic. at the end of every year i obsess about growing accustomed to a new year. i wonder how it will sit in my belly. how it will feel on my tongue. and every year it settles in naturally as i'm sure this one will as well. and to be honest, i was never thrilled with the lopsided aesthetic of 2o11. especially after my love affair with 2o1o....a perfectly balanced year that included my 1o.1o.1o birthday which made my libra sensibilities soar in delight. and moving on to 2o12, i just need to let it warm up slowly and off we'll go. i hope it is prosperous and safe and healthy year for all.....

the warmth of a bowl of tea in my hands. the rain freezing as it falls. both fires in the house burning. the library dimly lit. the living room full of us. warm and sleepy. edgar stretched on the sofa, filling it completely with his fine long legs and his snores. stella fast asleep on my legs. tom smiling with his headset on listening to a live phish show. the year is coming to a close. i can feel the slow drizzle of time as it slips away. and in compensation, i feel plans gliding into place as the luxury of time opens up before me. my dreams are filled with ideas and i feel a new dominant calm.

the sun filtered through cold hitting my windows without leaves interfering. it's strong and true and makes cleaning satisfying and frustrating. i love the smell of clean wood. and the bleachy scent of the kitchen floor. the dishwasher humming along with sarah harmer belting out from my lovely bose ipod dock that sits on the kitchen island. a little fire in the dining room stove. and a cat on a folded quilt soaking in the heat from the fire and the light from the sun. sleep comes easily on days like this. a busy morning of accomplishment followed by a lazy afternoon.