Happy New Year!

Fireworks, Sauðárkrókur Iceland, 01.01.2012

This is just a quick post to wish you all a happy new year and let you know I had a fabulous Christmas with the family. I said farewell to my eldest son Dom yesterday, the last one to leave and am feeling a little flat.  I will update you all in the next few days, I just need to allow myself a little time to process the whirlwind that was the last two weeks.

I have never been one to make New Year resolutions, I am not a great planner or list maker...I tend to live quite intuitively and just see what comes my way.  However I have made a conscious decision to engage more actively in renewing, rediscovering my art practice...it is time. 

I am reading a book at the moment given to me by Lachlan, one of our Australian Christmas visitors and as I can be my own worst critic at times, I intend to keep this passage from it in mind this year.

"If we walk into a forest, we marvel at the range and texture of nature's appearance.  Each aspect of it is a wondrous expression of the universe - each tree, flower, blade of grass, bird and butterfly.  We don't feel any of it is a mistake.

We don't run up to the gnarled trees and tell them they should be like the tall, straight trees.  We don't tell them that they're not trying hard enough, or they're not good enough, or they're not practising enough.  We don't tell them they've gone in the wrong direction or that they should be something else.  That would be ridiculous."
Essence Revisited: Slipping Past the Shadows of Illusion by Darryl Bailey pg 33

20ll was a gentle year for me, a year of softly, slowly, settling into Iceland...feeling at home...with an inherent knowing that I am in the right place at the right time.  2012, I already know will be much busier...a year of consolidating all the efforts made and seeds sown last year.  I feel a little daunted by all that I have to do but mainly I feel excited by the challenge and the prospect of new adventures.