I’ve got slightly behind with sharing my Art Cards.
Not because I stopped making them, but because I’ve been feeling pretty rubbish for the last week or so. Run down, headachey, achy and generally without much spare capacity. The cards were still happening quietly in the background, but writing about them and putting them out into the world felt like one thing too many.
And perhaps that’s quite appropriate for the first of them.
Autumn Equinox — BALANCE
The Autumn Equinox is a moment of balance: light and dark, summer and winter, growth and retreat.
I’d been thinking about taking stock.
I’ve realised recently how easily I can turn almost everything into another thing that needs to be achieved. There is always another job, another idea, another project, another thing I ought to have finished.
So I drew a face with her eyes closed.
She isn’t achieving anything. She isn’t planning her next move. She is simply stopping.
The drawing is deliberately unfinished and imperfect. There are construction lines still visible. One side of her face is more worked than the other. And actually, that began to feel like the point.
Life is messy. Things remain unfinished. Progress doesn’t require perfection.
INTENTION: BALANCE
I don’t need everything to be finished or fixed. I can pause, take stock and make space for what matters.
And then, rather unexpectedly, something shifted.
After several days of feeling poorly and doing very little, I suddenly found myself wanting to do things again.
Not enormous, life-changing things. Little things.
Jobs that had been hanging around. Bits of the house. Things I’d been meaning to sort. Small tasks that individually aren’t particularly important but collectively take up an astonishing amount of head space.
I’ve ticked loads of them off.
And I feel calmer.
Not because everything is finished — it absolutely isn’t — but because I feel as though I’ve got hold of the reins again.
Scrap with Nat
Somewhere in the middle of all this I also went to a Scrap with Nat session.
And I think it has sneaked its way into my Art Cards.
I spent a few hours cutting things up, putting completely unrelated images next to one another and not worrying terribly much about what any of it was for.
A woman in lemon trousers in a supermarket. An enormous lemon. An octopus. Deep green water. Neon signs. A tiny bottle containing an underwater world.
And my favourite instruction:
Screw it, let’s do it.
There is something wonderfully freeing about collage because you don’t have to begin with an answer. You can move things around until something happens.
It reminded me that making doesn’t always need a purpose.
Sometimes the purpose is simply making.
Full Moon — ILLUMINATE
Which brings me to yesterday’s Full Moon card.
This one arrived through collage rather than drawing: an old image of the moon, patterned paper, translucent blue, silver tape, a botanical drawing and a slightly mysterious eye inside a black star.
It feels quite different from the Equinox card.
The first has its eyes firmly closed.
This one is looking.
And that feels strangely accurate.
A few days ago I needed to withdraw. This weekend I’ve felt my energy returning. I’ve been noticing what needs doing, making decisions, finishing little jobs and clearing some of the mental clutter that accumulates when life gets busy.
Nothing dramatic has changed.
But I feel more present in my own life again.
INTENTION: ILLUMINATE
Notice what has shifted. Bring what has been quietly forming into the light.
Perhaps that’s what I’m enjoying most about this Art Card project.
I’m not making a perfectly coherent body of work.
I’m making a record.
Some cards are drawings. Some are textile. Some are collage. Some take ages and some arrive quickly. Sometimes I know exactly what I’m trying to say and sometimes I only understand the card afterwards.
And I’m beginning to think that’s much more interesting.
The cards don’t need to prove anything.
They just need to notice where I am.
