Existential Questions

The other day, I was organizing my "Digital Collage" folder on the computer and stumbled upon some wonderful gray female figures. Several of them evoked thoughtful and angsty feelings in me. The question, "If the cruel and critical voices in my head stopped talking, would only silence remain?" popped into my head. It stewed there all day, and I decided to do a spread with the thoughtful figures and the various unsettling questions that echo through my being in an attempt to separate me from my inner peace.

In case you can't read them, the questions are:

• If the cruel and critical voices in my head stopped talking, would only silence remain?
• Have my career choices led to a dead end?
• If my jokes amuse only me, are they still funny?
• If I let my authentic self out, will my world explode?
• Does the fluctuation of pounds relate in any way to the value of my soul?
• Am I not girly enough to nab a guy who is a better man than I am?
• Will my shattered spiritual self ever be whole and strong again?
• Will my awkward awkward ever feel OK?
• If I could catch the magical moments in each day, what song would my heart sing? 

Aimless Art Journal Spread

This is one of those "finished it before I knew what it was about" spreads. I sat down at my table, continued my march through Buffy on DVD, and just started fiddling in one of my art journals. I had no idea where I was headed or what I was going to put on the page, either elements or writing. Here's what came out.

The face is one I drew on scrapbook paper. I like the effect of the design showing through the paint.

Book of Days: Cover

In 2011, most of my artsy efforts were directed towards art journaling. I've found that there's a really nice interplay between what my brain can express in writing and what it can express visually. When one or the other just isn't saying what I want to say or isn't getting to the heart of the matter, art journaling, the combination of both, is often the answer. Definitely something I want to keep doing in 2012.

To keep my art journaling habit going, I signed up for Book of Days with Effy Wild. Effy is leading a year-long art-journaling group. If you have an interest, hit the link and sign up. Hey, it's free. What have you got to lose?

Each of us in the group is picking a word or phrase to be our theme for 2012. Mine is "Trust". (Yeah, I put the period on the outside. In this case, the British way just makes more sense to me.) In this phase of my life, I'm rebuilding my ability to trust myself and others after getting a serious smackdown by someone who didn't deserve my (or anyone else's) trust. This year is about getting back in touch with the still, small voice, paying attention to my gut, and giving my own view of myself and what's good for me more weight than anyone else's.

As if the content weren't going to be challenging enough, the book I chose has really small (4" x 6") pages. I've never worked quite this small before. It'll be interesting to see what logistical challenges pop up over the year.

For the cover, I decided to be mostly monochrome. That decision held all through the background and front cover (even painted the brass-colored letters with blue Pinata inks), but I just had to use the glass-mosaic woman on the back. I've had the image in my stash for quite some time. She's from an ad for glass tiles. She had words across her middle, so I collaged over them with the phrase "How do you feel?"

Update...

She looks better in the above picture than she did in real life. The piece felt disjointed to me, so I knocked it all back with more blue. An argument could be made that I knocked it back too far, but it feels more cohesive to me, even though it's a bit darkish.