Homesick for Creativity – Mandalas & Words
June 11th, 2018
Homesick for Mark Making Creativity – Mandalas & Words
My work with plants and flowers is wonderful and crazy hectic in the spring. My mantra these days is a quote from George Washington Carver: “When I touch a flower… I am touching infinity”. I have this quote carved into the wood of my backyard pergola.
I dig in the dirt and come face to face with the mandala shapes of flowers large and small.
Those shapes represent the infinite through the form of a single flower. What more could I ask for? Life and the greening of earth explode in springtime.
(Three new robins in the nest above my front door)
I have another longing for the experience of infinity through creating mandalas. The sacred circle shape that has no beginning and no end. That shape accented with words brings wholeness to creative expression that fills a deep yearning inside me.
If I can’t create these images and words, I feel homesick for that experience, because when I create with these shapes and marks I am at home.
I feel that homesickness when I walk past the colored pencils, inks, markers, pens and carefully stacked paper on the way to garden. Right now I can’t take the time to sit down and settle into that creative space that fills my soul.
It’s been almost two months since I sat down and opened my heart to the creative spirit within.
That spirit waits patiently, always, while I do other things. In the springtime I have a reason for not having time for mark making creativity. The beauty and vulnerability of the thousands of plants I have to dig into the soil of new homes are a calling I can’t ignore.
So each day I touch those flowers and am glad.
But the call of creating mandalas and words grows stronger each day.
Fortunately my springtime planting marathon is almost over. I can soon sit down with papers, paints and pens and go home to the creativity that lives deep in my heart.
I am sharing photos of some of my garden’s flowers of infinite beauty from this spring. There is also a video of the baby robins that were hatched above my front door a few weeks ago.
And I am sharing the Mother Earth and Grandmother Earth mandala books I created just before spring and the plants grabbed my heart and time.
ENJOY & CREATE
