Just finished this one.

Hope.

Sometimes I have to walk away from something I’m working on as I despair it will work out to be anything near good enough.  Actually, it’s not sometimes, it’s most of the time!  However, I do persevere.

When I went to bed last night, this one was looking horrible.  I had the background done, the first layers of collaged patterned paper and the kind of hessian looking die-cut added too  I really wasn’t happy with it at all.

However, a good night’s sleep and a bit of inspiration on waking meant I knew where I wanted to go next, especially after I sorted out the jumble of die-cuts I have (note to self-get some way to organise these!).

Once started from the point of inspiration, the picture just grew to it’s finished state (well, I think it’s finished, that may change when I look at it again later on).

Hope.  A really good word here.  There’s always hope that no matter how bad I think something looks, , pushing past that often results in something good.  Indeed, sometimes the work can just be cut into pieces for use in another piece, which is how the iridescent, textured circles came to appear in this one.

Hope.  Making art always gives me hope that I can overcome the trials I face when my anxiety/depression/complex post-traumatic stress disorder kitcks itself up a few or several notches.  Art always gives me a place where I can lose myself in something that is meditative, mindful, self-soothing, and shows me that I can succeed even when the self-critic is telling me I’m useless, I can never get anything right, nothing is good enough, I’m a failure, and so on.

This past week or so, challenging myself to work with mixed media – something I’ve tried in the past and not really felt I was successful at – has been good to help me with the aftermath of a couple of rather strong anxiety attacks.  I’ve not had any for around a year now.

I was surprised by them and at their intensity and how they have impacted on how I live my life at the moment.  I find it difficult to go out into the world, want to hide away from people, and when I do go out it’s often in the dark hours so I’m not seen.

It also surprised me that this is how I used to live every single day for a very long time, most probably most of my life, until a few months ago.

Even though these two episodes have happened, I know I’ll get past them; I have in the past, and I can learn more about the triggers for them and also where this all comes from, which will help greatly in the counsellinge process.

So there’s hope I’ll improve in the long term, and blips are just that.  Just as I’ve hoped that my confidence and skill and expression via mixed media would improve.  I’ve just had a look back at the mixed media I’ve done in the last fortnight or three weeks, and even I can see how it’s all developed, in a positive way.

What’s made the difference for me with mixed media is finding the confidence to do my best to do it my way and to explore it in my way.  I have a lot more exploring to do, and a lot more confidence building in what I do with it. I will journey along this road, along with my drawing and illustration skills, maybe even writing, and with healing what I can of my mebtal health issues.

So, choosing the word hope for it to appear on this piece of art was most appropriate.