Today is day two of Maria’s artist’s residence. The idea is for her to work without the pressure of paying her bills all the time. A modest but welcome tax refund is making this possible for her.
The last thing she expected to be during this surreal time was free and relaxed, but so far, that’s what’s happening. I’m sure there will be all kinds of emotions these next few weeks. I am happy for her so far.
Maria is a workaholic, driven by the feeling she has to prove herself every day, in the ten years we’ve been married, I’ve never seen her so relaxed on a workday as she was yesterday and is today.
Retreats and residences are tricky, they can disorient creative people and put a lot of pressure on them to suddenly produce in strange and unfamiliar surroundings.
Maria just eased into it and has started making some beautiful collages, a medium she has never worked in before. I am so very happy to see her so at ease and even joyous. She’s never had time to be as free and creative as this, she can do nothing or anything that she wants.
She is off to a grand start. I’ll be taking videos every day. She put up 200 neat magnets on Etsy today, “Show Your Soul,” and “I Am Enough.” They are part of her contribution to helping people get through the coronavirus. The sentiment is very important to her, and these are good ideas right now.
I have been following the Tid-Bit Tuesday posts from Teresa Merriman from whom I have purchased some leather bound journals (some with watercolor paper and some with handmade paper) that she sells in her “shop” “Mind’s Eye Jouurnals. She has dozens of saved up videos on various methods she has played around with, including lots of ideas for doing collages. mindseyejournals.com is where you can find her journals and her Tid-Bit Tuesday “lessons” from back when she started doing them a few years ago. She’s someone you will resonate with. She recently made a trip to New Zealand as part of her bucket list of visiting (don’t know how many) countried by a certain age. Anyway, she had a recent video about using glass beads immersed in a clear liquid that you spread on the page as one “layer” of a collage. milkaTheAppreciator
Ludmilla, Thank you for sharing mindseyejournals.com. What a fun and informative site!