Happy Groundhog Day!
In spite of the big winter storm back in the Midwest and the East coast, the forecasting groundhog made an appearance long enough to see his shadow. Six more weeks of winter! While we are missing out on the great snow storms here in the Northwest, the low clouds, rain and fog are making it quite dreary. On days like that it's nicer to stay inside with a favorite hot beverage, do some sketching and dream of nicer weather.
I have actually been doing a lot of dreaming these past few months as circumstances in my life are shifting. At certain crossroads it's good to step back and assess where you're going and if your priorities have changed. It would seem that I have arrived at that crossroads and it's time to make some decisions. Oh, don't worry, it's nothing terrible. I'm not giving up art or anything like that, but it might be going in a different direction.
Last fall my husband finally went back to work after a long lay-off, but it required him to be away from home for extended periods. It has been a big adjustment for us and while we're not happy about being apart we are grateful for the work. What we didn't realize at first was that it actually was presenting us with a new opportunity. For this new job we bought a small travel trailer for him to stay in. This now gives us the option for me to go and join him wherever he may be working.
So now I get to try creating art "on the road". I am excited to be able to explore new places and hope to be able to actually spend more time on my art, documenting the new things I'm seeing. But this traveling lifestyle will take a bit of planning as I will have to make adjustments for painting in a smaller space without access to all of my art supplies and reference material. And it also means that I have to consider how things will be taken care of at home while we're gone, so the normally large garden I plant will have to be down-sized considerably. (I'm not sure how I will do that!) Still, I'm looking forward to the challenge and the new possibilities.
It will still be a month or so before I can start joining him (six weeks if the ground hog is correct!). Until then I will be setting myself some new goals, collecting some "traveling" art supplies and making my plans.
