ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #8 "BEAUTIFUL"

Our prompt this week at Artful Journeys is to express something you find beautiful.

Beauty can be interpreted in many ways, with many meanings. There's the outward physical beauty of something, like a spectacular sunset, tinted with the hues of a rainbow; there's the innocent beauty of a child, both physical and emotional.  There are few things more beautiful to me than a field of giant sunflowers blooming in the hot Texas sun, with their bright faces turned toward a windswept sky, standing proud and tall.  Or flowers blooming in profusion along the side of the road.  I find beauty all around me, and in the oddest kind of places.

Today, I noticed a dead, fallen tree along the side of the road, with its branches all askew that formed the most interesting, and beautiful visage.  The beauty of a simple little ladybug, perched ever so-gently on a leaf, or the emerging splendor of a butterfly from its cocoon.  A stack of empty wooden frames causes an immediate vision in my mind of the beauty that exists in the wood, and what could have existed in those frames.  As artists, we see things with a different eye, a different perspective, and we interpret these things in a million different, splendid and captivating ways.

My interpretation today is in the form of inspirational beauty.  I am totally in love with quilts. Old, worn, cherished quilts handed down from one generation to another. Or beautifully crafted new quilts, seen with the artists' eye versus those of our ancestors who created these visions of loveliness out of a sense of need, rather than as decoration or pleasure.

Created in my large Dylusions journal, I wiped on some of Dyan Reavely's new Blendable Acrylic Paint in bright sunshine yellow with an ordinary paper towel.  Nothing fancy or complicated with that.  The paint goes on as smooth as butter, and blends like a dream (I played on some previous pages!).  Next, I gathered up a bunch of quilt images that I had been saving.  I find that I am continually inspired by quilt patterns.  I love the geometric shapes, the tiny stitches, the possibilities that those shapes generate in my brain.  The images were arranged in a fashion that I found pleasing, and I applied them with Liquitex fluid gel matte medium. I got a few wrinkles, but oh well!  I finished off the page with some faux stitching with a black Sharpie marker and added a little poem about quilts and families that is one of my favorites.  I messed up the first line (and had to look it up), but the poem goes.....

A family's like a patchwork quilt, with kindness gently sewn.
Each piece is an original, with beauty of its own.
With threads of warmth and happiness
It's tightly stitched together.
To last in love, throughout the years
A family is forever.

I hope you find some inspiration in the beauty all around us that is life.  Thanks for stopping by to look at my response to our prompt this week!