Mental Monday: The Mind, Part II

Color allows me to make sense of emotions, especially those that have been suppressed for a long time.

One of the first pages of my visual journal -- looking back I understand why the colors look so painful.

When I began to take swimming lessons, I kept two separate journals. An 11" x 17" visual journal with just my drawings & paintings, and a smaller diary.

As a visual artist, I have come to trust whatever marks and colors I put in my "visual" journal. I don't erase anything, and I do a lot of free flow exercises. Even if the patterns, colors, and marks don't make sense in the beginning, I know that they will guide me in the right direction because they come from a deep place.

Diving Deep, November 2014

I trust this deep place. And, with fear, I dived into places I never thought I'd go.

After writing and painting in my two journals for 14 weeks, I began creating Breathe.

Breathe is a special, one of a kind book I made for my swimming instructor. It was a surprise gift for him.

Gold leaf cover and matching clamshell box drying

I had originally painted the cover silver and blue.

Then, Baltimore swimmer Michael Phelps was in the news, and I watched numerous videos of him and others swim in previous Olympics. (I must confess that watching Michael Phelps win his Olympic Gold Medals was exciting and made me rethink how I constructed the design of the book.) In the end, I decided to make everything gold.

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Baltimore Sonnets

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