Perched

"Perched" - mixed media on canvas paper. 20" x 16".  Ready to frame.  Available here and at Artfinder.

There is a new sign in my studio - "Leap Before You Look."  And it couldn't come at a better time - the muse was playing hard to get and the inner critic was feeling all sassy and full of herself.  It has happened before (as it does to all of us).  Since my magic wand is in the shop, a reminder to take outrageous risks will do.

I am perched on the precipice of change.  My physical life, transformed by an accident two years ago, is growing ever more limited.  "Lead a gentle life", the doctors say.  Tell that to my wild heart, which longs to run with the cheetah.

All that energy has to go somewhere.  And so it begins, the current of life pushing like a storm surge into unexpected places.

Even as I am forced to let go of this activity or that, pulling ever inward, a space opens up.  A wide open space which wasn't there before...and the muse comes rushing in.  In a moment of illumination I can imagine things in that space - new things, risky things, oddities and quirks.  Things that were crowded out before.  

We are like someone in a very dark night over whom lightning flashes again and again. - MAMONIDES    Those flashes!  I catch each one in a jar like fireflies.  Each one a reminder to ​leap.