Splashing Through Life - Art by Patricia Henderson

 I bought a cool square mixed media sketchbook over two years ago. I decided to set a goal for myself to fill it with fun stuff within one year. But life has a way of messing with plans and good intentions.  But the other day, I was quite excited to finally finish this art journal! It took about 2 years and 4 months. I actually felt quite a sense of accomplishment, even though this book does not contain any "fine art", nor does it have cohesive theme. It was just a place to experiment, play, scribble out my feelings, and learn new techniques. My next art journal has less pages! Maybe less intimidating? I recently learned a few basic bookbinding techniques, so I'll be making more journals by hand in the future I think! 30 seconds of what goes on in my head! I stole this idea from the artist Austin Kleon who wrote the book Steal Like an Artist . I'm sure he'd approve. Over 300 grams of "stuff" added to this journal.

 As a Canadian, the last several weeks have been frustrating, frightening and confusing, amongst other things. Talks of annexation by the United States, tariffs, and tension with our neigbours to the south have made for a lot of anxiety and worry.  I'm finding it hard to concentrate on art-making, even though I know it is very therapeutic and I should be doing more of it. I've been turning to my art journal a bit more often because there are no expectations to turn out a good piece of art. I don't need to show any of it to anyone if I don't want to. During the pandemic, a wonderful artist from Michigan, Kimberly Santini, generously produced a series short videos on Facebook called Journal Through It. I watched quite a few of them and still use some of the ideas in my art journal today. One of the things she does is to write down whatever is in your head: just spill it out onto the page. Write out all of your fears, angry thoughts, worries, hopes. Scribble it down fast ...