Hello,
Hopefully your Summer has been fun.
Leading up to Summer solstice, I’ve been editing and decluttering with gusto. To celebrate, I am giving away a free art gift with every print bought until the end of June. This is only for people who are on my newsletter list. Get in touch to see what’s available.
CLEANING AND FREEDOM
Some people are not bothered by clutter, but I am.
Ireland is a damp country, and items can end up mouldy. Plus, I prefer space around me, not loads of stuff that is never used.
DIGITAL CLUTTER
There was a lot of poetry, stories, and other writing on my laptop so I finally bought an external hard drive to transfer everything.
Storing work ‘in the cloud’ uses a lot of data, which is causing massive pollution to our environment. Plus, if I upload documents to cyber space there’s no accountability: I might never look at that stuff again!
You could say that I took the road less travelled in the hope of being less frazzled. First, lots of writing and copies of various files were deleted from my computer. Once I knew what I wanted to keep, the transfer of text documents to the external drive was easy.
I can’t say the same for my images. I went through the same process, double-checked everything, then -poof!- my photos disappeared. Hundreds of them. Oops. In future I’ll be taking images off my phone weekly, and triple checking to make sure that they’ve arrived at their new destination!
ART DECLUTTER
I am delighted with my little corner of Zen. There was three times this amount of stuff as you see here to sort through, so it feels good to have put multiple scraps of paper and notebooks into the recycling bin. The art studio has been cleared too.
Having things neatly stored and easy to access has helped me to move on to creating new work for sure. Donna Goddard has this to say about decluttering:
“Material possessions radiate a certain type of energy. They are not neutral. The more material possessions you have around you, the more distracting and draining those objects can become. If the outside world dominates your thoughts with responsibilities, worries, and conflicting energies of all sorts, then your mind and spirit will not have the space to allow the creative force to flow and flower.”
INSTAGRAM AND SPAM
I set up an Instagram account for my art, then got locked out of it. Maybe the algorithm was punishing me for trying to turn off all the alerts and blocking the spammers! Being bombarded with updates is no fun (f#ck you, A.I.).
Oh well. If you’d like to connect with me on the site in future, send me your Instagram account name or and I’ll get in touch with you.
As for the blue tree logo, it’s for a new project I’m working on, and I love the result. Usually I design logos for other people, so it was fun to figure one out for myself.
A WELCOME INVITATION
Someone who saw my art over a year ago got in touch to invite me to exhibit three of my paintings in county Limerick. It’s good timing.
Below are two of the paintings in development. I’m using oils on canvas, and hope that everything will be dry on time for the July exhibition. If not, there are some other paintings that I can share instead.
When I worked in Morocco, every day I went jogging on the beach at sunrise, and I loved it. In this painting I am trying to evoke that feeling of freedom, joy, and ease.
Such exercise doesn’t attract me these days, and I am far from fit, but a few weeks ago I went for a short jog on the beach. Very short!
A frozen shoulder is still restricting me, so I can’t move or practice yoga in the way that I used to.
However, my physiotherapist is wonderful. I still believe that this is all temporary and that I’ll regain full mobility soon. If not, it isn’t the end of the world.
It’s been over 15 years since I worked on a big painting, and I’m having fun with this one.
There’s a lot of work to do on it yet. So far, so good.
OPEN CALL
‘You look fine’ is an online magazine project. Read more here.
ART RAFFLE FOR GAZA
I am donating this painting to raise funds to support the work of Medicines Sans Frontiers in Gaza.
€2,930 has been raised so far.
Sixteen artists have donated work. Sales close at 11:00am on June 30th. Buy tickets here.
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I’m off to a garden party now, and look forward to dancing he night away with a tribe of friends who epitomise creative fire!
Thanks for taking the time to read my news. I will send another newsletter out when the new series of paintings is ready.
Take care.
-Kathryn.
kathryncrowley.eu 