Patience… is also a process

Maybe it’s something about being a mother, maybe it is my military discipline or the Protestant work ethic I was raised with, but if I’m given any amount of time, I will make the most of every minute. I am a fast worker. I learn through doing. I experiment and explore, often with risk taking ruthlessness, as I try to release my creativity from my perfectionism. This is how I usually find my creative blissful flow.

With a heap of energy I had made a bunch of stencils: women in burkas, Afghan military check points and Australian War Memorial images all found on the internet. Stencil making with the Stencil Film made me so frustrated – so slow!! Maybe my scalpel was too blunt or I was just too impatient. As much as I wanted to see it as something else, I found stencil cutting tedious. All I wanted to do was get printing!

I wondered how I was going to get the textured result I wanted for the mountains. The clean line of the Stencil Film was not going to produce the organic line I was after. However, I also had collected lace, decorative rubber matting, dried leaves, scrunched papers and textured material. Always after a quick and simple way to reflect my ideas, I decided started ripping and tearing, scrunching and roughly cutting a series of mountains, or at least parts of them. I layered them, pointy pinnacles and broad mountain shoulders.

I’d wanted to use actual dog tags for the sun, but there is a risk that it’ll be too sharp and raised, it could tear a blanket. Still, I had so many ideas.

And then, just as I was busting to print – time ran out.

Patience.

But I now have everything lined up ready for printing day.