My version of the via creativa isn’t a paved path.  It’s a journey.  The path opens up beneath one’s feet as one wonders about and explores the possibilities presented by life.  Life as-it-is, here and now, in this very moment.

I’m in awe of the movement of the via creativa in my life.  If I’m open and my mind isn’t yapping away telling me what I should do and how it should look, amazing ideas and possibilities arise.  Connections happen.  Questions form themselves.  Wonderingmind flowers.

Many years ago I studied traditional and contemporary textile surface design in Japan.  I often used shibori dyeing techniques in my work – both in wearable art and wall pieces.  Here’s an example of an early work:

ebbing : Leigh
900 x 550
arashi shibori, stitching, canvas, washi, silk cords, found object

In my notes for this piece I wrote:

I spent the winter of 1987 in a sleepy village called Leigh on the Pacific Coast.  The cottage overlooked the harbour where small fishing boats and yachts would anchor, and the water view reached over to Little Barrier Island.  The pattern produced by the arashi process brings to mind the ripples on the tide as well as the patterns left in the sand by the ebbing tide.

Years later I was fossicking through fabric scraps and came upon some more bits of the arashi shibori cloth I’d dyed during those years.

Hmmmm.  Wonderingmind liked the patterns; the way the indigo dye flowed in softly graduated tones from dark to light.  I’d been painting with acrylics more recently, layering them on textured canvas in a technique I call making love with light (thank you Daido Loori, Roshi).  Wonderingmind asked: what if the arashi patterns were transferred to canvas and I played with light upon them?