medicine earth

I have been spending the last ten days in uncertainty
working on this eco printed 2 sided piece.

I can not tame it into my aesthetic.
It roils and bubbles and gets lumpy and ugly.
I can't seem to please it.
I can't seem to find my way with it, and yet it holds such promise with its beautiful earth - archteype- thin place lovliness/anxiousness

I can't just abandon it.

It is typical of what so often happens for me with dyed fabric.
An example of how hard it is to be simple.
I respond to the marks made by the bundled plants
I respond to the beatuiful accidents and want to sing along with them.
But when I do that, the aesthetic of simplicity that holds my work steady
is abandoned.

These marks are exciting.
Is it possible to carry their energy with my hands back to my simple quiet spirit home?

and also dance with them in their own space?

Yet these exciting and beautiful marks resist me.
They are too strong.  They are willful
They are difficult.

I sit and stare at it a lot.
Does it need some colour?  I pin pink linen to lower right.
Does it need a red bit?  I pin a thin horizontal line.

I make a red cross.
I make black and white borders.

I need to work through this piece.
It needs me.
I've experienced some loss recently

I need to be needed.

Making is medicine for me.

Art work made by hand is a physical outward attempt
to communicate something terribly inner.

(from an old journal)

The archetypal shapes are helping me.

the circle
the cross
the grid
dots
spirals

Marks that connect human psyche across time and place.

painting is so difficult, life is so short 

                                                                                                            Louise Bourgeois