The Weekly Wonder Drop | August 11, 2024
The Weekly Wonder Drop | August 11, 2024
Lessons from my Watercolor Practice & a Meditation on the Art of Growing Slow
Friends, my apologies that this is late and a smidge different than planned.
The week and its end went a bit lopsided. An extended family member passed away. And the news, while not unexpected, was a gut punch. Death is always a gut punch. My heart breaks for his children and those he left behind.
Sometimes the only answer to loss and grief is sitting still in the moment and leaning into the gravity it contains. Leaning into the silence instead of filling it with noise.
Wonder isn’t just about beauty found in beautiful places. It is also about the beauty that still lives in broken places that are hard and painful… about finding goodness amidst moments shattered into shards.
So yesterday I stood in my garden and stared at the sky instead of a computer screen. I pruned dead flowers so new life could grow in their place.
Wonder isn’t just about a creative practice, it’s also about creating space.
That’s one reason watercolor wind-downs have taught me so much about being present. Here are a few things I’m reminded of:
As colors gently meander and mingle, perhaps the objective isn’t to be the fastest, but the fullest. Full of things that matter. Brimming with moments that have been savored and celebrated.
If you want tiny details, paint slowly with an impossibly small brush. Precision cannot be rushed.
Neither can real growth. In fact, growing slow with your art may be the very thing that allows you to grow out of fullness. To sink roots deep into the earth of your story, and flourish from there.
As I tell my watercolor students: color goes where water flows. When water is there, the pigment moves. We all need places that move us. That make a way for us to blend and expand, to transform and become.
I wonder what lessons you have been learning in your creative practice? What would a place that lets you flow and flourish look like to you?