Here are some art journal pages I worked on this week:

I felt myself wanting to do a little collage and tell some emotional stories, so I went back to some pages I had done backgrounds on, and just let myself glue down images and quotes and scribble a bit.

The above is one of my favorite paintings (I actually have a poster of it in my studio and it says “A Studio of Her Own” and the quote is from a Tori Amos song I have had in my head all week. It resonated with me because as I do anything creative, there’s always a part of me wondering “am I present? Where am *I* in this? Am I just going through the motions?”

Maybe that’s why I was drawn back to my little box of images and quotes… there is a LOT of me in that collection, and putting some of it on the pages of this journal feels very much “me”.

I was thinking a lot about “space” as I made these two pages. The quote is from Maya Angelou.

Just some journaling on an already-there background of stamped-off images (to clean my stamps after I use them!) and some mists. I have to admit, I love having the foundations of pages ready to add to them. It feels much more approachable than starting a blank page from scratch.

More images and words on an already-completed foundation page. This one is about how summer still has potential, even though it’s not really bright and airy like it was when I was a kid. The quote about nature is from Oprah Winfrey.

Finally:

The quote is from a Wailin’ Jennys song. I actually painted it with Twinkling H20s, but you can’t see them in the photo.

And then the foundation page, before I stamped the dragonflies and quotes on it. It’s layered collage, pan pastels, mists, tape, stamps, stencils and inks… pretty much everything. I had a blast with it.

Thank you, as always, for looking!