This is us
This 10 minute reflection on a very special image of the earth from NASA made me feel a lot of things. Not exactly hope, but not despair either. Maybe even a kind of peace. What a grand adventure, no matter what else. Hank Green’s words, the music and images are beautiful, too.
“This is a planet where someone is up to something. Some of what we are up to is wonderful. Some of it may be catastrophic. This…doesn’t wave away those contradictions or resolve them. It shows all of it at once. This is us.”
Why do we turn ourselves inside out for art?
This is a question I ask myself regularly! It’s helpful to hear that other even accomplished artists like Meera Patel feel the same way—what is the use of making art, anyway? I also know that hopelessness is one of many emotions that rolls through me on any given day—and this is true for most if not all artists. There’s also excitement, resistance, flow, reluctance, soaring confidence, self doubt. The list goes on. The answer, of course, is to hang on, do the work anyway, with the understanding that doubt and fear and all the other negative feelings are as much a part of the creative territory as joy.
Just today Carolyn Yoo reminded me:
“What’s helped me break the myth of needing to always enjoy my practice is the reminder that creation is labor. You are making something from what was previously nothing! You are bringing your work into existence. No one would fault a mother birthing a child for experiencing messy feelings and all sorts of pain during labor (I hope). Flow state and joy may be an ideal state, but should it be the metric we measure our creation upon?
What matters is that you showed up, despite the chaos of your feelings and thoughts, and created something. Some of those days felt great, others not so much. Maybe all of it felt terrible. But you did it—you made the thing. And you will make more.”
I’m saying this out loud because while I may know the truth of creative practice, in those dark moments—and it happens more often than I’d like—I forget.
See what else I’ve added to my home on the interwebs lately.
Believe in Her
Oh my gosh, this was such an emotional piece. I had been working with the much younger part of me, my creative self, trying to get back in touch with that fearful little girl huddled in the back corner of, well, me. I kept asking her questions: What are you afraid of? Where does all that self-doubt come from? Why can’t you just stand up for yourself?
By the tone of those questions, anyone (but me, apparently) might note that I wasn’t exactly speaking (to her by which I mean myself) kindly or with empathy. Maybe even a little aggressively…with some kind of underlying accusation…? Not surprisingly, no answers came.
And then I journaled:
…5/22/26 What is my wound? I was always a dreamy kid, loved books and imagination…reflection, introspection…making things. Building worlds for Barbies (systems?) Organizing “clubs” for the neighbor kids. Creating projects—May Day baskets, readers digest trees, girl scout crafts, a novel with my friend Lynda, making wood scrap stuff. I wanted to write. Poetry with Katrina. That story with Lynda. Diaries. Later the Literary Mag in high school, then an English major in college. etc. See adult careers. Blogs.
But I always struggled! Highly self critical, I regularly started something and then lost my motivation. I compared myself to others and I was never as good as_____” fill in the blank with childhood friends and then adult colleagues, friends and acquaintances.
I saw the same pattern when I began to make art. I had this same BIG YEARNING to create, but there I went again with the comparision and self criticism and start-stop stuff…
So what is the wound?
Self Doubt for sure. My belief is that my creative self is not good enough to make art. I tend to see struggle as proof. Since I struggle, I must not be good enough.
If Kening Zhu’s wounded creative self was an invalid*—a child in need of protection—what is mine?
A cowering child, alone in a corner. Abandoned.
[Now we see where the image in the artwork comes from].
…My adult self perseveres, damn it. I will not give up on this BIG YEARNING. I recognize that if I want creative expression this much then it must be true that I’m supposed to do it…and yet, I’ve left that child alone. I’ve given up on her…or maybe I am the scared child whose adult self doesn’t believe in. Ah. That is true…
I don’t believe my creaitve self is goo enough to be a a (good) writer or visual artist. My adult self is critical. Sees mistakes. Is a perfectionist. Is unforgiving of failure.—failed attempts. She’s also under the impression that if someone IS good at something it should com easily…
So what do I have to do to heal this wound?
Well, my creative self needs needs someone to believe in her! Neither creative self or other self has even had someone who believes in her…and it’s long past time to look for parents to do the believing in…I need to parent my (little self)…
…just because I’ve had this realization here and I’m writing about it doesn’t mean I’m doing it. I need to actually engage in the work of believing in my creative self. And she needs to come out of the corner, dry her tears, and quell her fears because someone has—I have—her back. And we need to start creating from a belief state.
And so, after this pretty big lightbulb moment in my journal, I turned to my sketchbook and made this page—and the words there came. Interestingly in 3rd person. We contain multitudes.
*Kening Zhu, linked by Carolyn Yoo, really helped spur this whole line of questioning. I’m sure I’ll talk more about both of these online marvels at another time.
See what else I’ve added to my home on the interwebs lately:
A home for the books I read
My book gallery as of July 2026
I finally have a list—a kind of digital bookshelf —of the books I’ve read. I keep the growing list here in my Web Home. I love to read and I love to recommend books and talk about books with others, but I have a terrible time remembering titles, authors or even what I read so keeping track of the books I read has been a game changer.
Landing on a space for this list has been harder. I could never land on just one place between my Kindle app, the Libby app (where I borrow most of my books to read on the Kindle), Bookshop.org (where I purchase any books), my book club’s list, not to mention book reading apps I’ve tried such as Goodreads (blech) and Fable (it’s okaaayyy).
It’s only a list for 2026 (lists for other years remain scattered), but start where you are is my motto. Going forward, my book lists will live here year to year.
I have purposely not added links to any book seller and I haven’t rated or reviewed any of them. That would be great—but way too much work at this point, and I need to stay focused on just what I need: a list of books I read by year, available to anyone else with similar taste. If the book is on my list, it means I finished it so I liked it well enough (I don’t finish books I don’t like. No time for that!)
Now, yes, some I LOVED and some I have lots to talk about—but that will take conversation or some personal journaling—a perfect thing to do in this room as I live in my Web Home. But for now, my shelf is up to date and I’ll keep it up to date as I read.
See what else I’ve added to my home on the interwebs lately:
Hmmm, I liked this practice
“If your goal is to carve out your own creative path, then over time, I hope that you go from asking, “Is this right?” to asking, “Is this right for me?” Amy Maricle, Mindful Art Studio
I found myself recently going through my sketchbooks and I came across my Jan-March art journal pages from last year, 2025. I had been experimenting with the morning pages concept—aka Julia Cameran The Artist’s Way —using image rather than text. Or more accurately, doing a brain dump first thing in the morning with image (and some text) rather than straight writing as she recommends.
Anyway, I’m pleased with those pages now an I am sorry I stopped making them. Why did I stop? It was a good practice, really, and I like many pieces of them.
I don’t think it was so much a journaling practice—which for me is writing to think about what I’m thinking about—but as an art practice. I spent almost every morning drawing what came, and over time images accumulated across one page to the next. Those drawings came from a different part of my brain, I think, as I allowed myself more freedom to let whatever came to mind come to the surface. I didn’t insist that it made much sense. I think if I’d kept going, I would have refined and deepened the practice and refined a visual language for myself.
I know why I cut that exploration short. We moved. And when the moving dust had settled I’d talked myself into choosing other ways to fill that precious morning time. But I wonder. Should I pick this pracitce back up?
See what else I’ve added to my home on the interwebs lately:
A belated update on my March art practice
Here it is, the end of March and I haven’t updated my Studio Notes all month. You would think it’s been crickets in the art studio as well. But oh no, l I’ve been quite busy!
Twenty-six art journal pages in march
My whole art practice shifted this month.
It’s hard to believe, but I began creating visual art in journals almost 15 years ago and I continue to this day.
And yet, this month I’ve come to understand that I didn’t really believe in it. Can that be true? I think it is. I resisted identifying with myself as an art journaler.
I have to credit Amandaswork for big help in perspective shift as she shared her process and mindset, but also it’s taken a lot of inner self recalibration work to learn how I value myself to get to this point. But this month I finally came to a place where I could accept that, well, filling art journals is worthy of creative practice.
Of couse, I’ve always known this. I have filled sketchbooks with line and color, shape and form for years because at some level I believed in its value, its worthiness. But I don’t know, I also questioned its legitimacy, I guess. Making art “just” for myself didn’t feel like enough.
But the truth kind of settled. I was tired of fighting myself. I create in art journal to have the experience of making—within and for myself, and I am enough to receive such a gift. And filling books with art IS such a gift.
So I just I decided to just do it—really do it—this month. I created pages nearly every day and I released concern about good or bad, beautiful or ugly. And this alone was a shift because yes, I admit again, in the past I tried to fill every page with a full, final, good composition. I had to let go of this really persistent fear I’ve always had with every blank page: that I had no ideas. Which really meant no good ideas. Instead, I got curious.
What if I just start and fully accept the results even when they suck—maybe especially when they suck? And yeah, I’ve known intellectually, that this is the way, for years. Make a lot and make a lot of bad art to get to the good. But it’s another thing to actually do it.
As you can see above, I let go of those expectations (and perfectionism) and I just let myself come to the page every day. And yes, some pages are pretty bad…but some? I either like quite a lot—or I see kernels of ideas for other ideas…
Anyway, for whatever reason, I finally let myself go, and that’s how I’ve worked all month. Now, fear has been largely replaced with excitement to see what will actually come from my hands and my heart over the days and weeks and months ahead. Probably more than nothing. Probably new ideas, some good ones. How will what I do here inform other work? Or maybe, I’ll just have had spent really good time every day.
Oh—and I don’t need to share every page I make. In fact, I probably don’t need to share most of it (“I am enough”).
And/Both/Also: Art journaling doesn’t have to be my only art practice.
I art journal AND I make other things: paintings and collages, zines, comics, essays... Although I’d say lately those other things have become fewer and farther between, but I’m just saying (out loud, to myself), it doesn’t have to be either/or. I can be an art journaler and also a maker of other things.
I do think that one of the problems I had with art journaling is that i create for myself there, but I do very much believe that art is made to be shared. I believe art is a fundamental human force for good that enriches our human experience on this planet with beauty, empathy, human connection, insight, delight…the list goes on. We take art so for granted, but a world without art—music, story, imagery, writing—would be dreary and alienating—even impossible. It’s not just enrichment—art makes survival possible. Story, music, film, the visual arts in its many forms—so much art from other artists has altered my life completely. Shouldn’t I create for others too?
The answer is yes. I feel that calling. I can’t deny it. It’s time to think about making art with the intention to share it. And I can do that too. Both/and, not either/or.
And so with this permission shift, I’ve been thinking about what to make as an art practice, as an ongoing effort and I do have some ideas, and I feel very much at peace with the idea of creating for both myself and for others. That proverbial juggler spinning plates comes to mind. With the art journaling plate fully spinning now, I feel like I can pick up a few more plates and get them spinning too. I feel renewed energy and focus.
Hello April…