Walking alive

I watched this short video the other day. I appreciate Kim Hermanson's book 'Getting Messy' a lot, and the work that she does. The video essentially calls for thinking of a metaphor that describes your place, then another one that is more neutral or different or just one that pops into your head. Then you put them together to open up new ways of thinking. Watch the video because she explains it better than I do.

I often say that living in Canada as an immigrant makes me feel like a skimming stone, bouncing over the surface of water. On the other hand, while this conveys my unsettledness, I also feel that I don't want to land and sink either. As she talked about the idea of the second metaphor an image dropped into my head from nowhere, as far as I could tell, except that my brain was I think trying to resolve the mixed feelings about the skimming stone metaphor. I had the image of being a walking tree, like in Lord of the Rings, but younger and more agile. A tree with tree legs. So when I put the images together I had a willowy tree with legs taking steps through the water. With roots, that put down whenever a foot lands, but which are also carried on with the journey.

Today I had another painting afternoon with my friend (where we realized we've been doing these painting sessions for two years - how did that happen?!). I tried to paint the image, and realized why I rarely try to paint actual things. Still, I like the painting - that tree is really pressing on.

We also went into the garden and did some splatter painting and some Rorschach type folded paintings. I had to leave some of mine behind because they weren't dry but here's one I liked. It reminds me of a peacock and my friend said to her it looked like fireworks.