Sundrip Journals
I’ve been sketching and painting away anxiety. Anxiety has been so high lately but at least I have something to show for it.
Honestly, I’ve messed up more new art than I’ve completed but man it feels good to paint. What a release. I even did a finger painting. Hopefully I can get some images up here soon.
Faith
I started this little painting back in October of last year but I just now finished it. It looks so much better in person than the terrible photograph. This 7×10 watercolor piece has a lot of numbers on it. The numbers are ages that were very significant to me with age 47 being the last significant age on the painting.
The painting shows a young girl who divides the paper. She’s a young me with a split face depicting multiple personalities. Though I don’t know the exact age I split, I’m sure I was fully a multiple by the age of nine. I have a few symbols in the painting like a peanut and a purple butterfly as well as a wheelchair with a sunflower instead of a wheel.
One of the most significant things about this painting is the tree. It is bare on one side and full of colorful leaves on the other. Though they’re fall leaves that are technically dying, the point was to have colorful and lively leaves like seen in the Fall, which happens to be my favorite season.
I call the painting Half a Century More because of what a friend said to me jokingly the other day. I told her I’m about to turn 50 and she said, “Oh, you’re going to be half a century old.” Well I tell you I was floored!!! Wow. Do you have to put it that way? It took a few days to kind of get settled with it but now I think to myself, I’ve lived a half century but I’d like to live a half century more. I’d like to have a lot more art to paint, dolls to sew and days to figure out how to be happiest.
I won’t be 50 until August but I’m so, so exited I can’t stand it. I honestly never expected to see that number. For many reasons I didn’t expect to be here but half a century on and I’m still kicking!
Faith
When I was young my mother used to tell me quite often that a person was trying to punish her for a perceived slight. She constantly accused my sister and myself of stealing money from her purse even though neither of us had done so. I didn’t realize then it was paranoia but now I see her behavior so clearly that it frightens me.
As she got older her paranoia got even worse. She feared I was trying to kill her, feared my sister had conspired with me to kill her, so on and so forth. She trusted no one but her baby sister, no one.
I fear being like her in this way. I have recently had bouts with paranoia, nothing like she had, but paranoia nonetheless. I don’t fear people are watching me or trying to kill me. I just watch everything because I don’t trust much. I then become obsesses with matters until I exhaust my mind.
My paranoia worries me. My obsessions worry me. I hope that I’d accept medication and treatment if things got to the point of how they were with my mother.
This 7×10 piece was drawn then painted in watercolor in my art journal pad. It shows a young girl (me) with her eyes closed and an unreal world swirling around her. Her body twists into a background of watching eyes that trust nothing.
Faith
Ah yes. It’s Friday. There will be popcorn and beer, art and music. Let’s get this party started!
The studio shelves are stocked with supplies. I’m ready to go. I’ve been working on a small piece for a few weeks now and I’m past ready to finish it.
It’s been a week of high anxiety and OCD symptoms but I’d like to put all that behind me and just have a little fun. So that is what I’m going to do.
Faith
She accurately represents how I feel often. I wish I could say that I’m okay and that life is good. I mean really, complaints should be few but in general I’m not a happy person.
I named her Lola because in some languages it means Our Lady of Sorrows. It seemed so appropriate.
Lola is my third handmade sad doll. I made her with real hair this time instead of yarn. I really like the look. Lola is in my personal collection and sits where I can see her each day.
Some have described her eyes as knowing and with a story to tell. I just think they look wide and sad, much like my eyes as a child.
I made Lola a little sister named Victoria aka Victory. She’s not a sad doll. As a matter of fact, she’s a doll that is at peace. She’s not grinning but she is full of life and innocent. Victory is also in my private collection.
Now comes Grace. Grace was to be the 4th sad doll but she ended up not looking so sad. I like little Grace.
I like her wine colored dress and the bow in her hair (not shown in the photo). She’s wearing a second-hand Gloria Vanderbilt dress. I couldn’t believe I found that little tiny dress. It’s just adorable. I added a small heart button and put the tiniest, little gold details on it, not much though. The dress is simple which is what I like about it. I added a small piece of gold hair jewelry to her long, braided, yarn hair. Little Grace will be going home with my new nurse’s aide next week.
So while I deal with some sadness and depression right now, I’m out here making dolls and doing my best to manage life.
Faith
⤠Faith
Faith
Sometimes I paint on a tiny little canvas because it feels less overwhelming and very doable. Larger canvas is hard to manage so I don’t mess with that at all but even at times an 8 x 10 piece of paper is daunting, so I pull out a small little canvas and let my mind play.
Lately I’ve painted sunflower after sunflower. It’s my go to art symbol that represents an array of mixed and confusing emotion with dissociation and multiplicity. One thing I recently learned about the sunflower is that when the sun isn’t out sunflowers face each other and sort of share energy.
The sunflower is the absolute perfect symbol of multiplicity. It’s got all those little lives (seeds) in its head. It can be a larger than life support system for itself and others which I find very, very cool.
One tiny painting included in this entry shows a little black girl hanging on to a huge sunflower. The other is a sunflower abstract. Each painting is on a 2.5 x 3.5 inch birch wood canvas. I used acrylic paint and ink then gave them a gloss finish. These little tiny art pieces would have originally shown up in my Etsy shop, however, they’ve been sold.
In between creating tiny art there is more doll making and art journaling, which I shall share at a later date.
Thanks for visiting Sundrip. If this is your first time then, welcome. If you are a regular reader, thanks so much for coming back.
Faith
Mariah is approximately 24 inches long in her sweat plaid, red dress and white ruffle bib accented with a red flower. In her textured yarn hair she wears one white flower.
Mariah’s golden brown skin was created with acrylic paint on cotton fabric. Her cheeks are rosy red and her eyes wide and beautiful.
If you’d like to adopt this sweet girl, please visit my Etsy shop at www.Sundrip.etsy.com.
Thank you for visiting SUNDRIP- Art for Life
I’m still screaming and fighting in my sleep about things that happened two and a half decades ago. It makes me wonder if I will ever have peaceful sleep. I feel like I have a measure of peace in my waking hours but sleep is haunted, vicious.
Today my anxiety took a turn for the worse. I’ve started seeing things move out of the corner of my eye, things that aren’t there when I turn to see. I recognize this as a symptom of my anxiety. It’s a warning to me that I’ve got to put my best coping skills in the front so I can calm down.
Anxiety really got bad when I received an alert over my phone saying that Indiana is now under a curfew. What perilous times we live in. I was comforted by the fact that the elders from the Kingdom Hall (my place of worship) contacted me to let me know that there’s a curfew and I should take it seriously and be inside for my safety. They offered a few practical suggestions that also helped me feel safer and less anxious.
Tomorrow starts another day, one I do not feel will be any better than today. It will be a mess, but I will meet it with my head up and my heart full of hope.
This takes me to the newest purchase. First off, I sold 4 dolls and 7 art pieces in two weeks so I decided to buy something special for myself. I purchased a leather bound journal for my gratitude entries. I’m so happy with it. I love it.
I’ve got a special pen, given to me by a special friend, that I’ll use for this very special gratitude journal. It’s so pretty in person that I hesitated to write in it for two days. I wrote my first entry today which gave thanks for the people I’m surrounded by that are my family of choice.
Today I took the opportunity to express my love for family and friends by making calls and sending emails. I’m not quite finished yet. I want to make a tiny little difference in their day with an encouraging call, text or email. As I said, we live in perilous times and people are probably just as anxious as I’ve been. I guess I just want to recognize that by reaching out.
That’s all for this evening.
Faith