Art Journal

This is my new art journal. I was inspired by iHanna, a swedish woman about my age, who has a fantastic blog here.

She has inspired me in ways I didn't think possible, but yet in ways I wanted. I've always had a love for decoupage, and through reading her blog, I found that it's really ok for me to tear up a newspaper or cut up a magazine.

I've been journaling for years upon years. It is something I learned way back when. I have battled depression for just about as long as I can remember, and I had a couselor who encouraged me to write it down.

I stopped for a few years, due to the fact that everything I wrote, despite being supposedly private, was read and ceremoniously torn to shreds and often burned to ashes in front of my eyes.

A few years ago I discovered blogging, and for some reason, felt solace in letting people read my innermost thoughts and feelings. I guess deep down I knew that it wouldn't be ripped up and burned when they were done reading it.

My husband respects areas of my life that had been tread upon before, and 9 or so years after the abuse ended, I'm feeling more secure in myself and my writings, and starting to put it on paper. He doesn't go looking for my writings, and when I feel the need to share, he nods as he reads, with thoughtful appreciation, instead of getting angry, tearing it up, and beating me within an inch of my life.

iHanna has silently and unknowingly led me to the belief that it is ok to express myself through both words and pictures. Sometimes pictures are all I have for ways of expressing myself, because words often fail me. I'm not sure I'll ever find the words (or pictures) to thank her, or even the nerve to contact her, but regardless, I'm eternally grateful.

The picture of the cover of my art journal says lots of things. Can you see it?

I'm sure the pictures jump out and scream at you first, because they are in color, but do you see the words? "It's ART when you see past the clutter" I'm a clutterbug. I don't think many people see past that clutter to see me, but that's ok, I guess.

There is the word "freedom" there, also. I'm free from the bounds of the abuse that held me prisoner for so long. I'm finally letting go, and another step of letting go is with that journal.

"Journal" is partly covered by the heart. I'm not sure why I did that, but it's there. I got so tired of trying to hide my writings on scraps of paper hidden in my sock drawer, or under the mattress of my son's bed. I want it known that my new book is a journal, but the "al" is covered up. Maybe I did that because "Journal" can also be "Journey" if you change the last two letters.

Life is a journey. It's been a hell of a ride for me.

The horse and the heart and the flower are all things that represent freedom to me. The horse is obvious. The heart because I've learned to love again, and learned to love myself. The flower because it grows. It doesn't care if it's pretty or not, it doesn't care if it's judged, it just exsists. It does it's job and goes on. It is free from the bounds of human society that hold us all in a painful grip.

The newspaper background is the clutter of my daily life around me.

This very well may be the only explination I give for any of my art. You will probably be left up to your own devices to decide why I picked something to paste in the pages of my journal, or stuff on to a little art card, or even onto a little box, that may be for sale some day on ArtFire.

Maybe, instead of trying to find out what I mean, you can see past the clutter, and just enjoy the art!