Hi All:
Here’s the latest painting hot off the easel…literally hot, as I painted much of it out on my back porch. This is a departure from the imaginal style that has become more the norm for me over the past ten years. It was an interesting journey because the inspiration for the painting was from a more fantastical, imagined image I painted 30 years ago. I wanted to do a new version showing the energy flows between the trees and the woman, but once I started painting her and getting all the shadow details, it didn’t seem to be the direction the painting wanted to go. This is one of those cases when I had an idea of where to go with the work but along the journey, I had to adjust and adapt to what was actually presenting and let go of my preconception. The image nevertheless conveys the reverence and reverie I was wanting to capture and I believe the sensitive viewer will resonate with the feeling of that connection and communion between her and her surrounds.
I’ve not put out a blog for many moons. There are numerous reasons, but suffice it to say that many of us have entered a new phase, and the world at large certainly has. For the last two years I’ve been writing my second novel, which is now finished. I hope to find a new publisher in the coming months, and if I don’t find a good fit with a publisher, I’ll self-publish again. I have options and am being patient about the process. I hope those of you who read New Moons will want to read Book Two of the series, which starts 9 years after the end of Book One. I’m excited to share it! The working title is Vibrum (a word that landed in my brain one day, and that is explained deep in the story).
Before I sign off, I want to acknowledge the profound shifts happening in the world, and the challenges we’re being called to address. One of my more potent life lessons lately is how strongly (and righteously) I can hold a position and that in doing so how it sets up a dynamic that doesn’t foster substantive motion or change or growth. I am catching myself breathing through those moments when my need to be right about the way things should or could be get caught and stuck. It’s one thing to have hope and vision about how things could be better, but it’s quite another to take a step out of the ego’s certainty about things and see how things look from an unlocked perspective. And, of course, the state of the world at this time is undeniably fraught with challenges of all kinds, so its all the more easy to get intense about things.
Recovering Eve is essentially a testament to relaxing and staying open to the beauty that is around you and letting it purify, nourish and re-size you. This is vital because when the next personal challenge shows up you’ll be a little freer of the small ego-self (your person-hood size) and have better access to an expanded consciousness which is less likely to close down on conclusions, which doesn’t deny anything, which can access force-lines and allies and available energy to bring to bear on the situation. I know many of you also have personal practices and I commend you for it. My own practice is allowing me to experience new perceptions, new options that haven’t occurred to me previously, and enlarging my repertoire of what might be possible.
Blessings from Home,
Nancy
