courage, small huge questions, winter water colors, loving vincent & „experiment. be weird.“

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Year’s end. With some small, huge questions. What do I want to change? What am I proud of? What do I want to make more space for? And what do I want to let go?

Also, a single word riddle: At #decemberreflections2017, the final theme for December was „My word for 2018“. I thought about it since a while, but nothing felt really fitting. And I didn’t want to pick something when it wasn’t the real word for me. So I felt: okay, I can postpone it. Then, on the last day of the year, while doing qui gong, it crystallized. I even found an image for it in just some minutes:

„My word for 2018: COURAGE. Courage to try new things, to change, to speak up, to step out of my comfort zone. To worry less. To go ahead.  Courage – what i really like about the word is: that it is derived from „Coeur“, the french word for: „Heart“.
So: a heartful courage for 2018.

The decemberreflections and shared thoughts – the perspectives that brings, it is precious.  For me, it is inspiring to see how others shape their days and year. So much is happening, for me, for others. and it continues.

Oh, and I am back to aquarelle colors – a friend gave me a special brush as present, which gave the impulse to try it. And so I did a painting session, and now have ideas already for the next session. It’s good to get back to colors, to „grow“ colorful flowers in aquarelle while the garden is hibernating and while its overcast.

Now I am looking forward to the new year. I took extra time today to do positive and mindful things, as starting symbol for the new year: went for a wintersun walk with my partner. Painted some colorful flowers. Listened to „This is water“ by David Foster Wallace. Which has so many good and thought-provoking lines in it. Like this one:

„…the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.“

The first day of the new year also brought a photo joy: At Lenscratch magazine, the „Favorite Photograph of 2017 Exhibition“ went online. It’s a fascinating and multifaceted stream of images, sorted in an excellent way. My image is in Part 2 of the Fav photo exhibition, around #30 – following stars and moon, as part of a sequence of black/white reflections. Or to put it another way: I am next to „Sakaigawa, Tokyo, Japan“ and „Saturday Morning Laundryscape, Vancouver, Canada“:

 

The image is a mirror photo I took like that at the literature museum in Marburg. It’s only a bit cropped.

I start to miss the art academy, which is still in winterpause. When I browsed some art / creativity quotes, I came across one that touched me:

Ask questions. Be weird. Experiment.
Have goals. Believe you can.

And I saw a wonderful art film, in an arthouse cinema called „Atelier“. I had read about it in December: „Loving Vincent“ is a film made with oil paintings. Over 100 artists worked on this. Great visuals, fascinating technique, wonderful story. So good.

 

The film indeed is the world’s first fully oil painted feature film. And one of the directors is a name-sister: Dorota Kobiela, from Poland. She’s written and directed it together with Hugh Welchman. It took six years to create it.

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Some links of the week…