Dearest Natalie, While I would LOVE to see you represent the emotion present in sketching in interpretive dance (footloose, indeed), I think you nailed it with words! "A dance between the pigment, the paper, the wild, and me." I can totally see this in my mind's eye and it's lovely!! XO
I love your art (I have two of your prints on my wall) and your thoughts in this post. I too live with mental & chronic illness. I’ve been uncomfortably aware that my own art has been pushed to the bottom of the priority pile, for a bunch of reasons of varying degrees of validity. I resonate with the way you describe art as a whole bodied practice. When I have sat down to draw or paint this year, I’ve become aware that I am incredibly calm afterwards, in a way I haven’t felt too often in the previous decade. I could certainly do with a calmer pace of life and days filled with creativity and connection with fellow creatures. I will try to carve out some sketchbook time today.
Thank you for your beautiful words Fiona, and I am so grateful for you sharing. I hope you were able to find some self care time in forms of pencil to paper today - you are so deserving of that peace, calm, and compassion. I think we get to lean into this work more and more as the wheel turns, and it is a gift to be able to embrace that stillness and calm. So honoured to be walking and drawing this wild world with you!
Thank you so much, I appreciate your encouragement. I must confess I teared up a little reading your words about being deserving of peace, calm and compassion. I think you’ve hit upon the core struggle for me, in the context of my own depression/anxiety: the feeling of undeserving-ness. But I did manage to find half an hour last night before bedtime, to sketch out a little Sable Antelope portrait. I will try again today. Thank you 🙏🏻
I see you Fiona. I understand that feeling, so very much, but I see you, and you, my dear, are so deserving of all the good things. Sending you so much loving kindness, and hope you can find some calm and quiet time with pencil and paper to soothe your beautiful wild heart. xoN
Oh most dear one- this is perfect.... Natalie with your writing you have coaxed depths alive. I hear you, see you, and am in this dance. Your words enable sketching with wonder - I am a learner sketchmaker, and do feel how sketching remains abstract, until I feel into the embodied being I am viewing to sketch. A spiritual merger? I need feel those wide wings, wet round eye, the feathered crest, the sturdy clawed foot wrapped around branches. Then the paper and pencil and me are in flow. Perhaps in feeling into the object, animal, bird, tree, we are naming a revival of the old art of shapeshifting? It does not matter that everyone may not beleive , this shape shifting serves the return of wellness to community
Yes to shapeshifting dear Merrill, this feels so real for me too, and I think that it is a big part of our wild nature, and our wild spirit, that we have been missing for far too long xo
Yes, I so resonate with this! I find sketching outdoors in nature totally takes me into not only a space of really looking, smelling, noticing, listening, even tasting my natural surrounding but indeed becoming an integral part of it. Sketching is such a healing, nurturing and fulfilling pastime, I encourage anyone to go for it!
Thank you Natalie, for this beautiful post. I remember Jackie Morris being asked in an interview, whether she imagines the animals she paints as being in movement, since so many of the animals she paints are moving. Her response was that she imagines she is the animal as she paints. I loved that, and feel like you are articulating the same idea.
Oh I love Jackie Morris, Carri! And I did not know she had said that - I love her even more now! It is allowing that shapeshifting aspect that brings another layer of magic and beauty to the process, and I think it is something we were always meant to do, or always did, way way ago - watch, observe, become, embody, celebrate. All connection in different ways.
Dearest Natalie, While I would LOVE to see you represent the emotion present in sketching in interpretive dance (footloose, indeed), I think you nailed it with words! "A dance between the pigment, the paper, the wild, and me." I can totally see this in my mind's eye and it's lovely!! XO
This made me smile so hard. I am doing an interpretive dance right here in my studio right now ;)
Thank you for your very kind words xo
I love your art (I have two of your prints on my wall) and your thoughts in this post. I too live with mental & chronic illness. I’ve been uncomfortably aware that my own art has been pushed to the bottom of the priority pile, for a bunch of reasons of varying degrees of validity. I resonate with the way you describe art as a whole bodied practice. When I have sat down to draw or paint this year, I’ve become aware that I am incredibly calm afterwards, in a way I haven’t felt too often in the previous decade. I could certainly do with a calmer pace of life and days filled with creativity and connection with fellow creatures. I will try to carve out some sketchbook time today.
Thank you for your beautiful words Fiona, and I am so grateful for you sharing. I hope you were able to find some self care time in forms of pencil to paper today - you are so deserving of that peace, calm, and compassion. I think we get to lean into this work more and more as the wheel turns, and it is a gift to be able to embrace that stillness and calm. So honoured to be walking and drawing this wild world with you!
Thank you so much, I appreciate your encouragement. I must confess I teared up a little reading your words about being deserving of peace, calm and compassion. I think you’ve hit upon the core struggle for me, in the context of my own depression/anxiety: the feeling of undeserving-ness. But I did manage to find half an hour last night before bedtime, to sketch out a little Sable Antelope portrait. I will try again today. Thank you 🙏🏻
I see you Fiona. I understand that feeling, so very much, but I see you, and you, my dear, are so deserving of all the good things. Sending you so much loving kindness, and hope you can find some calm and quiet time with pencil and paper to soothe your beautiful wild heart. xoN
Oh most dear one- this is perfect.... Natalie with your writing you have coaxed depths alive. I hear you, see you, and am in this dance. Your words enable sketching with wonder - I am a learner sketchmaker, and do feel how sketching remains abstract, until I feel into the embodied being I am viewing to sketch. A spiritual merger? I need feel those wide wings, wet round eye, the feathered crest, the sturdy clawed foot wrapped around branches. Then the paper and pencil and me are in flow. Perhaps in feeling into the object, animal, bird, tree, we are naming a revival of the old art of shapeshifting? It does not matter that everyone may not beleive , this shape shifting serves the return of wellness to community
Yes to shapeshifting dear Merrill, this feels so real for me too, and I think that it is a big part of our wild nature, and our wild spirit, that we have been missing for far too long xo
Yes, I so resonate with this! I find sketching outdoors in nature totally takes me into not only a space of really looking, smelling, noticing, listening, even tasting my natural surrounding but indeed becoming an integral part of it. Sketching is such a healing, nurturing and fulfilling pastime, I encourage anyone to go for it!
I love this Judi, and so completely agree! Using all of our senses really does tie us back to where we belong, doesn't it!
This is beautiful and expresses so eloquently how I feel. ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for sharing Fran. I see you - and I am so honoured you are here xo
Thank you Natalie, for this beautiful post. I remember Jackie Morris being asked in an interview, whether she imagines the animals she paints as being in movement, since so many of the animals she paints are moving. Her response was that she imagines she is the animal as she paints. I loved that, and feel like you are articulating the same idea.
Oh I love Jackie Morris, Carri! And I did not know she had said that - I love her even more now! It is allowing that shapeshifting aspect that brings another layer of magic and beauty to the process, and I think it is something we were always meant to do, or always did, way way ago - watch, observe, become, embody, celebrate. All connection in different ways.