And now for something completely different

I've been working long hours in the studio nearly every day for the past couple of weeks and am delighted by the intense creative pace and the resulting mental momentum. Usually I take my time creating a work - first the mental work of weeks of contemplating a concept and image, several tiny sketches, intensive day and night painting sessions, revisiting the work over and over again over a long period for the finishing details, followed by weeks (or months!) of distraction and studio avoidance. Only then do I begin a new work. However, at my current pace, I'm moving from one work to another, unconcerned with completing each piece before starting another - as a result I have several works nearing completion in the time it normally takes me to finish just one.

With my new-found momentum, I've been reviewing photos from my travels for inspiration, with the idea it's time to challenge myself to work on something other than my usual themes of motherhood, community, and nurturing. As I reviewed photos from last year's trip to Thailand I found images of a fantasy peacock temple that had captured my fancy in Bangkok's Ancient City, a huge park featuring small scale and life-sized replicas of ancient architecture in Thailand. I took dozens of photos of that particular temple, thinking I'd like to do a peacock painting... however, by the time I arrived home, just in time for the hectic Christmas season and subsequent months of distraction.

Yesterday, nearly a full year after my original visions of creating a peacock painting, I googled images of peacocks as well as information about their symbolism in different cultures. I was reminded of what beautiful and unusual creatures they are, and found intriguing information here and here.

My apologies for the lengthy post - the point I was getting to is I have the beginnings of different type of painting on my easel:


Actually, now that I see a portion of the 10 year old painting in the background, I realize my "new" image is far, far, from being completely different. Hmmmm...