I majored in art at a small private college, but looking back, I feel my education was lacking in one important way. Art history was, of course, part of the required coursework, but there was very little emphasis on technique. I remember learning why a particular painting was revered in its time, or what made it unique or controversial, but not much about how the artist actually made it. How did they compose the painting? How did they choose their colors? What decisions went into creating it?
I’ve always been drawn to self-education. I know it has its limitations, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. I still love figuring things out for myself.
Maybe that comes from growing up in an old farmhouse where I spent hours reading anything I could find. There was no teacher there to guide me through all the things I wanted to learn, so I mostly had to figure them out on my own. I was the youngest of three children and the only girl. My dad died when I was two, and a few years later my mother was diagnosed with mental illness. I spent a lot of time trying to teach myself things, and just as often ended up frustrated when I couldn’t figure something out or didn’t have the right tools or supplies.
My mom did teach me to crochet, and later my cousin taught me to cross-stitch after she learned. I immediately started crocheting Barbie clothes and designing my own cross-stitch patterns. At one point, I cut up a pillowcase to use as fabric for one of my creations. I got into trouble for that, of course.
I also watched a lot of PBS as a young child. Many of the programs I gravitated toward were cooking shows, and cooking became another creative outlet. There was always food available to experiment with, and I loved the idea that I could take a handful of ingredients and make something. So you can imagine my disappointment when our school district eventually dropped the shop and home economics classes I had been looking forward to taking someday. Those were exactly the kinds of classes I craved.
Not that long ago, I decided to learn watercolor painting. That instinct to figure things out for myself has never really gone away. Lately, I’ve decided to turn that curiosity toward some of art history’s greatest masters. I’ve been doing what are commonly called master studies – choosing a painting by an accomplished artist and attempting to recreate it, not simply as a copy, but as a way of understanding the decisions behind the work. I tried a few YouTube tutorials on watercolor, and while they were helpful, I’ve learned more from these two master studies than I ever expected.
There is something very different about slowing down and trying to reconstruct another artist’s decisions. Instead of simply looking at a painting and thinking, I like that, I have to ask myself: Why did they put that shape there? How did they get that color? Where did they place the light? How did they create that sense of depth? What did they leave out? I feel like I am literally in their shoes.
It turns out that studying the masters this way is teaching me exactly what I felt was missing from my formal education – not just what makes a painting successful, but how an artist gets there. Of course I have to add my own spin, so I have been doing watercolor interpretations of some famous oil paintings. That’s why I stated these are “sort of” master studies.
And, after decades of figuring things out on my own, I’m discovering that sometimes the best way to learn is to call on the masters show you the way.
Here are process photos from my study of Picasso’s “Fleurs” (1901).
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Next, I’m working on a study of a small bouquet by Manet. I post process photos on Instagram/Facebook a couple times per week if you want to follow along.
I’ll start my post with a happy ending: My largest encaustic art work entitled “Where Now Meets Then” has been accepted into the Gates Mills, Ohio, Art Show, and is on display through April 27, 2025. See the Art for Sale page for location and hours.
Now for the beginning: The inspiration for this piece was the cover of a Jan Brett book I bought for my daughter years ago. I discovered the children’s book author and illustrator in our weekly visit to Hudson Library looking for books to intrigue a preschooler. I was fully intrigued this time – I fell in love with Brett’s art work accompanying the familiar fairy tales which I had been so enthralled with as a child. I still keep many of them in my studio, and often gift her books to my favorite young people.
One sketch I did looking at her book “Beauty and the Beast” which had a large tree trunk and branches with a few plump roses placed about the tree. A couple years ago, after looking at my sketch again, I went a step further and conjured an image through Ai synthography. This was a more gnarly, textured large oak tree with several roses like big apples nestled all about the boughs. I digitally edited one Ai image to make it my own style, then used it as a reference for my largest encaustic piece.
The 24 x 24 inch blank wood canvas had been sitting in my house for well over a year. I was frozen on what to do with it for a long time – I knew once I had this tree idea on paper I was ready to work big.
I prepared the canvas surface with a couple coats of encaustic gesso, then layered it with encaustic medium. I quickly learned when working on a large encaustic, it’s necessary to work in smaller sections in order to add and fuse the wax properly. Next I had to transfer my reference image to the wax covered canvas. I used the grid method, and drew it in nine separate sections. Once the drawing was complete, I went back over it with a needle tool in order to create deeper lines.
After the lines were carved, they magically came alive when I covered the canvas with black powder pastel. The powder sinks into the carved lines when wiped away to show a fairly detailed drawing.
The oil and powder pastel pigment palette changed quite a few times, adding frustration to the process at certain points. I ended up keeping the leaves various shades of green and blue from the start, but the trunk and branches were gray at first. They morphed in to a bronzy brown and taupe mix which I really think looks great with the walnut frame I chose.
The roses were initially bright red, then became coral and then orange. I finally settled on yellow once I decided to keep the scheme more analogous. Adding some gold metallic pastel also gave the tree a sense of being a monument. Changing the roses to yellow was the point at which I really started to connect with the piece in a deeper way. The yellow roses said “remember” to me, so I began to think of those blooms as beautiful memories situated on a weathered tree of life.
The background had been a light blue sky for most of the time I worked on the piece, until the yellow roses were done. This is where my intuitive autopilot kicked in. You can’t plan for the intuitive work or explain it, but other artists surely know what I’m talking about it. It’s a bit like when you’re driving somewhere and after you arrive you can’t recall any of the specific motions/turns that got you to your destination.
I also do not recall how I came up with the title exactly, but I often read poems online to get the best words or phrases for my art titles. Emerson is a favorite simply because he wrote a lot about nature, coinciding with my muse. All I remember is after reading an Emerson poem I settled on “Where Now Meets Then.”
The tree is life now, the roses are the best of memories, and the sunrise and barely finished landscape in the background is what is ahead in life. Or, perhaps it’s a sunset and the landscape symbolizes a past that is mostly forgotten. You decide, and finish the story your way.
We’ve all heard or even know that art is a journey, not a destination. For me it’s about immersing myself in the process – exploring, experimenting, and expressing. In 2021 I signed up for the Essence of Mulranny Painting with Fire nine-month series. I cannot praise this set of courses enough, and I have only purchased one year of them.
Essence of Mulranny Arts linked here is an art studio and classroom located in (as their site says) “sheep country” of Ireland. (In case you’re wondering, I’m not being paid to write any of this. I currently do not have any endorsements or monetize my web site. All my business income is from art sales.) I did not travel to Ireland, but I purchased the Painting with Fire video courses in April of 2021 and found a few favorite instructors: Elise Wagner, Pamela Caughey, Ezschwan Winding, and Lyn Belisle.
Elise Wagner has a very interesting background in collagraph printmaking and has used encaustic wax surfaces as the basis for prints, which I find very fascinating. I kept her techniques in mind when working on pieces where the texture is a focal point, like my encaustic painting below, “Beyond.”
Ezschwan Winding taught me how to approach a portrait and after watching her course, I ended up making the following piece, “Heavy,” which was accepted into the Lakeland May Show a couple years ago.
Abstract encaustic master Pamela Caughey’s course was my inspiration to make the Waterfall series. They were created all at once by first binding all the canvases together. The photo below shows them right after they were separated.
And Lyn Belisle’s course highlighting faux surfaces made me experiment further with metallic powder pastels in my work. I love when I can make beeswax look like burnished metal, such as the following piece, “Straw Into Gold.”
The handful of courses I have viewed have been so enriching to me that I have yet to finish watching all of them. They never expire, so that has been a huge benefit as well. I better catch up because more courses have been released every year since 2021!
I’ll always be striving to learn more. Looking back, it’s satisfying for me to see how I’ve learned from many sources and forged my own unique path with encaustic medium.
You might recall me stating one big reason I like encaustic is its versatility in the studio. I have been watching and learning from other artists since I first used the medium around 2018. Shari Replogle is an artist who taught me not to be more playful and not fear mistakes. Her web site linked here shows her talent for creating the most intriguing images from various mediums.
Shari has posted a series of videos called “Wax on Wednesdays” that are filled with beautiful, nature-inspired experiments with the medium. I especially love how many of her mixed-media art works included use of leaves and other natural materials. I found Shari’s YouTube videos to be quite addictive back in the first weeks of learning to work with encaustic. Her numerous tutorials gave me a foundation of playfulness which served me well when trying out new techniques of my own, uninhibited by expectations but with the purpose of learning. The videos are still on her YouTube page if you want to watch some yourself, linked here.
What I found most influential from Shari was the use of PanPastels with encaustic wax. To this day I consider them an essential part of most of my art works. The medium consists of powdered oil pastel which easily fuses into the encaustic wax with just a little time under the heat gun or torch. With limited time in the studio, it’s necessary to work quickly. Once I switched from pigmented wax to this alternative color option, my art work flowed much more easily from my ideas.
Here’s an older, sold piece I remember being directly influenced by one of Shari’s videos. From what I recall she had built up several layers of multicolored wax on her canvas, then carved away the top layer to reveal what was underneath. I used a picture of a chain link fence to create this pattern, and the green color on the surface was done with PanPastel. The second image is a closeup.
“Pattern Revealed” by Rachel Rivas-Plata, 8×8 in., 2020“Pattern Revealed” detail
I’m interested in finding a detailed answer to this question myself, actually. I’ve worked with encaustic medium for over 6 years now, and thought it’d be a well-deserved homage to my favorite art supply to delve into its history and how the medium is made and used.
Brief History of Encaustic
Beeswax is a preservative and has been used as such for thousands of years. We know the Greeks used it to protect and decorate their ships’ hulls as early as 500 BC. Going forward to the 1st-2nd centuries A.D., the Romans in Egypt used pigmented wax to paint portraits of the deceased, covering the faces and bodies of their affluent mummies. The 900 or so famous Fayum mummy portraits (one pictured below) are said to be very well preserved, retaining much of their brilliant color. Eventually, the use of encaustic in portraits gave way to a less expensive and easier alternative, tempera paint.
A resurgence of the wax painting came about in the 18th century, after archeological discoveries sparked interest in encaustic techniques. What ignited the use of the medium by artists even more in the 19th century was simply the invention of portable electric heat sources. Famous artists such as Jasper Johns, Diego Rivera, and Robert Rauschenberg are just a few who incorporated the medium into their work in modern times.
Encaustic Combinations
Since the 1990s, encaustic medium in art has become more attractive and popular as artists have discovered the myriad of ways to incorporate it into mixed-media processes and even into pottery and sculpture. This is what I personally find most fascinating about encaustic. It can be used with various other media to give an artist several paths he or she can take when attempting to master it.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen different combinations to use encaustic in art:
1. Over a dried watercolor painting 2. Over a dried ink illustration 3. Over an inkjet print on matte paper (including photos) 4. Combined with cold wax 5. Combined with oil pastel 6. Combined with oil paint 7. As a ground for alcohol ink 8. Over fabric such as linen or silk 9. Over a collage 10. Over pottery 11. Over sculpture 12. Over a cyanotype (what I call “Suncaustic”)
The most important guideline I find when working with encaustic is the need to avoid pairing it with acrylics. But even that rule can be broken since I successfully use acrylic chalk paint as a ground at times.
Grounds for encaustic art vary widely according to artist preference. I usually use parchment or watercolor papers pasted to the wood canvas. Aside from that, I’ll occasionally paint encaustic gesso or acrylic based chalk paint over the wood surface before laying down the molten medium.
I am pretty sure at most every art sales event, a beekeeper has kindly asked if I have need of beeswax. While I’m in awe of the beekeepers’ work and grateful for their care and service to the bees, I solely buy refined encaustic medium made by R&F Paints. It comes in tiny pellets which are easy to store and melt in small batches. The “refining” process filters out the organic matter left by the bees so the medium is quite clear.
Some artists create their own medium by mixing melted beeswax with melted damar (or dammar) crystals, then filtering out the organic matter manually. Damar resin (or gum) is a natural tree sap from lowland tropical trees in India and Southeast Asia. Adding more or less of the damar resin is known to result in a respectively harder or softer wax surface. I’ve never used a brand other than R&F, but will eventually to see if my surfaces end up more luminous with a different brand. I have seen some artists use only beeswax over a photo, and that works too, but the cooled surface won’t be as hard and resilient as when it contains damar resin.
While I use the clear encaustic medium in my art, I also use pigmented encaustic paints made by R&F and Enkaustikos. Very little of these go a long way since they can be diluted with clear medium. Combining pigmented wax with clear medium is also a great way to tone down bright colors or add translucency.
Care of Encaustic Art
Most of my art work made with encaustic comes with a label giving care instructions. Typically any fine art that has pigment will eventually fade in sunlight, so keeping all your art out of the sun’s rays will help them look their best for the longest period of time. Unfortunately, it seems encaustic has been avoided by some who fear it’s too fragile for them. I find it quite resilient once the wax cools and hardens. Sure if you take a sharp object and puncture or carve the surface, it won’t be the same. That would most likely be the case with an acrylic or oil painting too.
The worst thing in my opinion you could do with encaustic is leave it in a hot car. (Well, THE worst is to take a blow torch to it, but most people won’t accidentally do that.) Unfiltered sunlight can quickly cause the surface to glisten and perhaps even liquify, which is a good sign you should move it to the shade.
The melting temperature of beeswax is around 140F degrees, so I recommend avoiding storage in any area with such high temperatures. Encaustic medium (with the addition of the damar) melts closer to 200F degrees, so it’s a bit more resilient. Keep in mind some attics get very hot in the summer.
Avoiding storage in temperatures below freezing should be avoided too, some say. I’m not sure what will happen though. Right now I’ll stick an encaustic mini in the freezer overnight to see the results … I’ll share my findings with you at the end of this blog.
I’ve been asked if it’s ok to hang encaustic art in the bathroom – the short answer is yes since the beeswax acts as a protective barrier to whatever it covers. But that’s not the case with ALL encaustic art. For example, if you have a watercolor painting that’s only partially covered in encaustic, the humidity could do some damage to the unprotected watercolor. Rest assured, if I ever do make something that can be damaged by high humidity, I will note that on the label.
I believe wrapping encaustic art in tissue paper or wax paper and then bubble wrap is the best storage option, taking care that all the edges and corners are protected. I have seen a few encaustic artists on social media repairing chipped edges and corners for clients. Life happens, and maybe you end up accidentally damaging an encaustic piece. Chances are if you contact the artist or any experienced encaustic artist they can take a look and let you know if it can be repaired.
Cleaning encaustic art will really depend on the piece. As long as any art you bought from me was not covered with metal leaf, you can wipe it with a silky soft cloth (old nylons work great). Doing this can also bring back the shine on the surface should the piece lose its shine over time.
The results of the freeze test are in:
My encaustic mini looked the same as when it went in the freezer 8 hours before. I did a little more Google research on freezing encaustic art while I was waiting. I found that freezing them is a good test to see if the ground is compatible with the medium. If the surface easily chips or flakes off when frozen, an incompatible ground was most likely used. I think I can safely say that keeping them in a unheated area wouldn’t affect my pieces, but that can’t be said for encaustic art from all artists.
Sources:
Thanks to Wikipedia and R&F Paints web sites for many of the facts I shared above. Here are the linked sources I used, in case you want to read more. In fact, you can find many encaustic art teachers have very in-depth, interesting information about encaustic on their web sites. Wikipedia: Fayum Mummy Portraits Wikipedia: Dammar Gum R&F Paints History of Encaustic
I have done a lot of bird art over the past few years. Why the birds? Whenever I think of my first drawings I’m always taken back to my grandparent’s house in Chardon, Ohio. They were bird watchers, and the couple always had full feeders outside the window and bird books on the shelf. In their bathroom behind the door was a huge poster entitled “Birds of North America.” It felt as if I was in a museum when I gazed up at all the colorful illustrations.
I recall watching my brother place a piece of carbon paper under an illustration in one of the bird books, then trace it with a pen to draw an outline of the bird underneath. It was pure magic to me. I eagerly tried the trick too of course, and that seems to be where my love of drawing began. Most often, my subjects were houses, horses, butterflies, and birds. Whenever I went to their house as a young child, I would sit on the floor and pull open the bottom desk drawer which always held a stack of gleaming white paper. The top drawer held a collection of pencils and pens and a big, well worn eraser. I remember also drawing cross sections of houses too of all things while I sat on the floor – I think stemming from my love of doll houses and/or Richard Scarry books.
So now that I think of it, that explains why I made an image of a bird the first time I ever tried encaustic medium. And I go back to them as a space of comfort and unending inspiration. The shape of birds is such a familiar, simple, curved form. It makes me think of stylistic cursive writing, in a way. Their color palettes can be simple or complex and vary as much as a bouquet of flowers. When I don’t know what else to draw, I draw birds. Here’s my first attempt at encaustic. It’s oil pastel covered with clear encaustic medium. I keep this little piece of wood on my shelf in my studio. It’s a reminder of 1) how nervous and unsure I felt when I first tried it; and 2) that trying something different can end up changing the direction of my life and revealing what’s important to me.
Of course the symbolism of birds appeals to a lot of people too. The meanings and feelings that come with images of eagles, owls, peacocks, storks, crows, swans, and doves are strongly attached. I like bluebirds and goldfinches the most, since every now and then I’ll see a bright blue or yellow one darting about our yard in the summer, my favorite time of year.
In October 2021, I embarked on an Instagram challenge called Birdtober. The directions were to follow a list made by a Texas artist, Andrea Holmes, and create art pieces of each bird for every day of the month of October. I gained a lot from the experience, and you can read about it here if you missed that post. After two years, I feel ready to take the challenge again and have started some preliminary work on the 31 birds. Next month I’ll be able to show you the complete collection of these one-of-a-kind creations. As they’re finished, they’ll be listed on my Etsy site linked here, along with some 2021 editions currently there too. I will be making the round ornaments again since they allow me to work more quickly and keep up with the daily goals.
Encaustic medium is made from beeswax and damar resin. When working with the medium, I’m reminded of the connection to nature just by the sweet scent of it. I don’t keep bees, but looking at a photo similar to this one inspired me to pay some homage to the work of the bees.
Photo by pagala on Pixabay
I was not only struck by the beautiful pattern, but by the tones and contrast created with the empty and full cells. It got me thinking how the honeycomb itself embodies so much work and history of the bees that is so beautifully preserved by the structure and the beeswax.
In my studio, I keep boxes of antique books and periodicals which were left in our attic in our house in Windsor, Ohio. My dad’s family were descendants of the original settlers (Griswolds) that came from Connecticut to the Western Reserve in Ohio after the Revolutionary War. My late great great Aunt Sarah (Sade) Griswold was an active member of Windsor’s Historical Society and collected and donated many artifacts to the museum there. She also collected newspaper clippings which look as though they were gathered when she was quite young. She was born in 1886, became a nurse who never married, and lived to be 100! When I was a kid I used to poke around the attic and remember seeing many dusty letters, postcards, books, and photos but never really studied them. Now I take the time to really look at what Aunt Sade and my grandparents collected and think about why they thought them valuable enough to keep. Perhaps they were just hoarders? Perhaps they wanted their descendants like me to find and study them? I’ll never know.
So this piece began with some of the antique clippings from our attic. I scanned them to create digital copies which were then printed. As I cut the images from the copies, I was immediately placed in Aunt Sade’s shoes, looking closely at each clipping, literally reenacting her process. Once they were cut out, I decided to randomly paste them onto my wood canvas with no organization or reason – I suppose that represents the mystery that exists between her life and mine since I never knew her. I did not take a photo of this part – I really wish I had – but alas my composition will always remain a mystery as well since my next step was to cover the clippings in encaustic medium.
Once covered in the milky, slightly pigmented beeswax, I dusted areas of the surface with oil powdered pastels called PanPastels. I liked how they added to the mystery of what was hidden beneath the wax.
To apply the honeycomb pattern, I had first printed it onto paper then poked hundreds of holes with my needle tool into the surface, as shown in this process video.
The final step in the process was to choose some cells to carve out and reveal parts of the clippings underneath. Even though revealed, the images are still highly unrecognizable, strengthening the veil of mystery.
I called it “Preservation” since the beeswax will help to further preserve the history my Aunt Sade so fervently valued. I’m very happy this piece was awarded by the Geauga Arts Council, placing 3rd place in the Other Media category. It’s currently being shown at the West Woods Nature Center in Novelty, Ohio until October 3, 2023.
In late June we went on a trip to Emerald Isle, NC. It was my fourth time visiting North Carolina beaches, but my second visit to that particular area of the coast. I like it because there is lot of vegetation and trees there – I think that’s why they called it Emerald Isle in the first place, but I’m not sure about that. The coastline is called Crystal Coast and at times it looked like the Caribbean with white sand and jade greenish blue waters on the best sunny days. When the waves were too rough we stayed close to shore due to rip current warnings, but luckily the conditions got better as the week progressed and lots of boogie boarding ensued.
We visited the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores and I loved every minute of it! One highlight was the huge tank that had an actual old sunken marine vessel in it, surrounded by several species of fish, including sharks. I also loved to see the otters playing and various ethereal looking jelly fish in some other displays. When I was a kid, we had neighbors who had a huge aquarium in their living room – I remember being excited to see it every time we visited. I was a bit frightened of some of the creatures but mostly in awe. I still feel that way when I go to an aquarium or the sea, as I’m sure many people do. It really is like being in another world when you take time to be still and closely watch.
I was so inspired I created some encaustic pieces to commemorate the experience. They can be found in my Etsy shop linked here.
After traveling to many different beaches over my lifetime so far, it’s interesting to recall the various types of landscape, vegetation, and creatures I’ve come across with each vacation. New England beaches had a lot of rocks to explore at low tide when I was young, but the water was numbing from what I recall. During trips to the Caribbean I remember seeing the most sea life on a glass bottom boat tour and a snorkel outing, and seeing an iguana asleep in a tree is a sight I’ll never forget. On our honeymoon in Jamaica, we actually went on a night snorkel that was exhilarating, but we didn’t see much other than some bottom feeders. (When you are snorkeling at night with a flashlight, you just know a shark is following your every move!) Virginia Beach had lots of crabs scurrying across the sand and it was a lot of fun to stop them in their tracks with our flashlights. Holden Beach in North Carolina is a turtle sanctuary so there were no lights allowed after dark – that place is where we unfortunately discovered “no see ums” – if you know, you know! Florida is beautiful, but I can’t remember seeing a lot of nature on my trips there other than dolphins and the occasional gecko on a wall. Hilton Head is so full of people, I think the sea creatures have long gone – or at least left the areas where we stayed – it is interesting to see their birds and the occasional alligator there. On our trip to Jekyll Island, Georgia, last year we saw sea turtles at the local aquarium as well as several dolphins that came quite close to the boat.
Back to Emerald Isle – life on the beach there was enjoyable to me in so many ways, but mostly by combing through sea shells every day. Many shells are small and broken, but they are plentiful. Occasionally groups of pelicans flew by, but I didn’t see very many birds on shore. On a boat we took to an island near the Rachel Carson Reserve we did catch a glimpse of some wild horses. And during a sunset boat ride our last day there we saw several dolphins, and a couple of them did flips!
I didn’t go too far in the water for fear of the creatures I ironically love to watch. My favorite beach pastime was looking for what I call “sand puppies” (also called sand fleas or mole crabs). You can find them by digging under air holes left in the sand after a wave subsides – the sand puppies tickle your hand trying to get back to the wet sand. At low tide the tiniest fish get trapped in warm pools and my daughter was mesmerized watching dozens of minnows nibble at our legs. We tried catching some but they’re so small they went right through the net.
One very memorable day my daughter ran up to me carrying the net and dropped it to show me what was in her other hand – a big, beautiful live starfish. I asked her to put it back in the ocean after we took some video. You might think this a bit wacky, but whenever I see shooting stars I believe they are sent to me by my father who died when I was a toddler. When that happened I really felt like he was sending a gift to us and telling me he was glad to see me enjoying life with my husband and his granddaughter, both whom he never met.
I discovered it while watching a YouTube video on plant based eating of all places. (I’m no vegan, but dabble in it due to reported health benefits.) A guest on the video was an artist who described following her passion of creating glass jewelry. She recommended the book. She was able to wean herself from emotional eating by immersing herself in artistic pursuits.
Among many, many other topics Cameron discusses the inner child – the innocent, creative being in all of us. What has also stood out to me are these topics: Showing up in the studio. Paying attention to our emotions and reactions. Relationships that either contribute to or contaminate our creative selves. Self-care as a priority.
I’m taking notes in the book as well as in the journal she requires. I have kept up with most daily writing sessions and many tasks – there are a lot to choose from. However, the seven weeks I covered so far have taken me a couple extra weeks – it seems my earlier momentum slowed a bit.
Favorite Quotes
One aspect I love of the book are the quotes she includes on nearly every page. Here are a few of my favorites so far:
"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent." -C.J. Jung
I found two ways to relate to that. First, my father died when I was only 2, and that left my mother a shell of herself who never really lived many days since without sadness. I took the torch from her in a way and have lived a life of safety rather than risk, which has been observed by my own child.
"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive." -Robert Louis Stevenson
Amen to this! I remember so often in my twenties being unable to tell if I liked something or just went along with it because my friends did. This is where I learned trusting my gut and believing in myself has only gotten stronger and more reliant with age.
"I have made my world and it is a much better world than I ever saw outside." -Louise Nevelson
I interpret this as saying to myself: I am an adult and can create the environment I want, without worrying what others think it should be! Maybe one day I will build that Hobbit house in the country!
"Look and you will find it. What is unsought will go undetected." -Sophocles
So this seems to be an understatement when I consider all I have gleaned from her book so far. She talks about serendipity – making discoveries when not looking. Ironically that’s what this book is doing for me. All these years I have felt I needed a guide to follow in order to be an artist. Now I discovered this guide was always within me – to sound totally cliche!
As Socrates said: “Know thyself.” Without even finishing the course yet, I highly recommend it for any person like me who yearns to create more in a world that doesn’t always give rewards for the work. Finding acceptance in how I’m wired has been well worth my time and effort so far.
