Art Journal Entry, February 16, ©2015 Louise Gallagher

She awoke and heard her heart calling, and her dreams took flight.

It was a thought that floated through my mind as I carefully crimped and folded paper for a giant flower I am making for our wedding.

“When I am sleeping, my dreams are trapped in the night, captive in my mind. Only when I awaken and open my eyes to the light of day can they take flight.”

I kept folding and crimping paper.

The thought persisted.

I finished the flower I was working on and pulled out my art journal. Time to give expression to my thoughts.

What I love most about art journalling is, there is no right or wrong way, there is no ‘I need to clean it up, balance it, lighten it if I want to sell it’, or hang it on a wall, thinking.

There is only the blank page calling.

The unknown waiting to be explored.

Art journalling gives me space and room to explore, colour, texture, technique, tones, mediums. I can layer, paste, paint over, embellish.

It allows me to create for the sake of creating without any attachment to the outcome — it is pure and total freedom.

Sometimes, what I create pleases me immensely. Sometimes, the end product is not quite what I wanted.

It is a lesson in acceptance of what is.

I want to keep changing, adding, painting over, ‘making it better’.

I want to make it all pretty and nice and easy on the eye, no matter how much time it takes!

Sometimes, living with the discord grating against my senses is as important as finding the harmony in every heart beat. Sometimes, it is in the dissonance of where I’m sitting I discover the essence of my being alive.

In the dissonance, I feel my breath catch, my fear of discord rise up and push me towards the edge of running away, of taking off, not in a flight of fancy, but a run of terror I might be caught, I might be seen as something other than perfect!  It is in those moments I discover how important it is to stand in the broken, to be present in what is within and around me and accept, I’m okay just the way I am.

Just as with writing I have to allow myself to ‘write bad’ to get to the good, in painting, I must give myself space to create for the sake of creating without measuring what I’ve created against some hidden yardstick telling me it’s not good enough.

It’s not about the outcome. Like life, it’s about the journey of discovery.

For today, take your thoughts off of what you’ll get out of your day and focus instead on what you’ll discover. Open your eyes wide to every moment unfolding and feel your dreams unfurling their wings in the freedom of being present to the awe and beauty of the world breathing all around you.

Go ahead. Do it. Who knows what wonders you’ll discover?

Namaste.