Finding Red…

My work in progress, Art Friday, whatever you want to call it but I’ve got paint on my fingers….yeah. It’s back. And it feels good. I am definitely at a stage in my life where I don’t have an extensive amount of time to sit and create, so doing these ATCs is my little way of keeping the faith while most of my art supplies lie idle. This one is very much inspired by Rebecca Sower’s Red Thread Sessions that she just started up at her blog. I am not really a ‘red’ kind of girl- I tend towards the more serene, calmer colors in my art play. This was a jump for me, and I am astonished to discover that I kind of like it and might use it again.

Red has a derring do, a ‘i will not sit idly by’ sort of feel to me. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about how my life had changed. One of the scars of depression for me has been a transformation from a love of spontaneity to an almost maniacal avoidance of change. Before PPD, one of the my husband’s favorite things about me was my ‘get up and go have fun’ mentality…he knew he could suggest just about anything and I’d be game. Don’t worry, I’m a firstborn, so that was always tempered with logical responsibility. Since recovering from PPD, I have really struggled to go and move and be. I have become an almost ridiculous sort of home body, hardly straying from our fields and house- and going into the unknown scares me in a wild way. Even grocery shopping affects me with an awareness I did not have before. Fear is too strong a word- it is more a shyness that I’ve not had before- an almost contented feeling to staying on the margins of life and not really living life to the dregs. Doing this card  has been cathartic in that regard, just realizing that the feelings were there.  One of the things that circled in my head as I made this was the Lord’s sacrifice- a depth of pain that I can’t even begin to imagine- and that He died so that I might live. I need to honor what a precious life that is by living it instead of staying on the margin of life. So the phrase “live the life He gave” circles the card in a mantra of sorts.

It feels good, this space. I have a freedom in my art play that I’ve never had before- grateful. The muse has finally dwelt awhile and not left me bereft.