drawing | vein {or a thing about trees}

i read, and acted out on, THE ARTIST'S WAY, in the nineties. i remember loving every step of the way, and cursing those d*** morning pages. did it change my way to go about my creative perspectives and evolution? i doubt it. but to this day it does have a lingering effect on me. for that i'm grateful to the author, and to myself, for being persistent and consistent. in peaks and valleys.

it took me a while to discover my nineties down time had grown into a squalid attitude rather than a grand total of just a few bad days. i went through the motions of educating our young son, i tried to survive a gruesome part time job, and i found myself strapped inside a house. not just a house. a tiny one, that needed an awful lot of... renovation work doing. my first home, alone. 

i wanted to write, become a pro. that was my dream. so i joined a few writing seminars and i tried hard to fall in with the appropriate crowd. that never happened. so when julia cameron's twelve steps program appeared, i thirsted for it without realising it. i dug in and came out purged, or at least, it felt that way. it did bring out a longing to create, only perhaps not what i had previewed exactly. 

years later cameron published THE VEIN OF GOLD. for the life of me, i couldn't find my vein in it. i 've looked at the book in my bookcase on numerous occasions since and i think, no. i cannot tap more. the tree has given its juice, the vein is there, i can rest assured. finding your artistic way is a one way trip to yourself, and once arrived, well, you're already there. the mere presence of those books in my bookcase tells me creative labour and an icebergy tip of talent do the trick. every. single. time.

i'm a huge fan of keiko minami's illustrated works. there are moments i need peace and quiet around me and at those times her work never fails to spring to mind. i felt particularly vulnerable last week, on my way to cartoon classes, as i discovered i'd mistaken my personal diary for my saturday notebook. i was passing a bad moment indeed, so i tried cooling down by doodling a winter tree and its bare 'veins'. oh yeah. it did the trick. veronica's vein {of gold, might i say} this weekend on our DC.