My son, his wife and their two little girls have moved back to Sweden after 4 years in Singapore. They needed to build on and had to move the woodshed. Andrew decided to use it as functional art – or land art as there is enough wood there to use forever anyway. So he built this fence along the edge of their property – which is in a previosuly summer house area 20 miles north of Stockholm, overlooking the Baltic. The fence is like dry-walling where the logs hold each other in place. I’m looking forward to seeing it in snow. I’m very happy that my family is nearer now!
I can’t let the old year slip by while I am still reflecting and looking forward. As ever I need to answer Jenny Ditzler’s questions to “My best year yet?” I know what some of my New Year’s Resolutions are and here are the ones I’ll share with you:
Practise Contentment (without losing ambition or dreams, revelling in the moment and not getting anxious about tomorrow)
Aim for Tranquility (i.e. no moaning or whingeing about things like the growing potholes in Oxfordshire)
Stay focussed (this is where you help me by reading my blog – writing it helps me to be careful about going off on too many tangents).
I still worry about all those different things I do rather than just one stream of creativity – right now I am doing a house portrait – part printing, part watercolour; an oil painting, an oil painting sample for my teaching which is totally different to my work and a collograph. You will see what I mean when I put up my retrospective gallery of work from 2015. It makes it difficult for me to know who I am, never mind clients, students and blog readers. Branding??? Then I realised, hey, I am really a teacher and this is often the mandate for teachers. Also my background as a calligrapher/lettering artist required me to be versatile. Excuses aside, this year I am still hoping to create a clear identity as an artist.
Here are Jenny Ditzler‘s 10 questions ‘that will change your life’ She says it takes 3 hours to plan your year but I think I’m a plodder so I need a couple of days.
- What did I accomplish?
- What were my biggest diappointments?
- What did I learn?
- How do I limit myself and how can I stop?
- What are my personal values?
- What roles do I play in my life? (e.g. parent, spouse, artist etc.)
- Which role is my major focus for next year?
- What are my goals for each role?
- What are my top ten goals for the next year?
- How can I make sure I achieve my top ten goals?
I’m not that public as to answer them all here, but will look at the relevant art-ones for me and blog some for the record!
Happy New Year and I hope that all of you have a wonderfully creative year and make things into which you have poured love.
Thank you for hanging in with me…
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