This past year has been quite wild. Much growth, which brought up doubt and fear. Bringing borders to cross and others to get to know better. Winter is here and since last year’s winter it has introduced me to a new space. A space for resting, pausing, reflecting, exhaling, painting…
Expressing myself is what feels like the thing that keeps me sane. Either through paint, words, colors… I am exploring how far I want to stretch my creative practice. Currently I am exploring video making and it fascinates me endlessly. Each medium brings its very own, unique way of how I can express myself and they all also have their own limitations. That whole process inspires me enormously. Exploring the limits, the boundaries and trying to figure out how to expand, even a little more and further.
In my very first video called ‘WINTERZONNEWENDE ~ De Winter Is Hier’ which translates to ‘WINTER SOLSTICE ~ The Winter Is Here’ I am exploring this very special day and the season itself. I have learned, while researching and exploring the very nature which surrounds me, that there’s so much ancient wisdom surrounding us which can connect us to this colder and darker season. I have been finding it in wild plants, trees, wild animals, myths and legends, ancient sounds, the landscape itself…
It is connecting me deep within myself, with my roots and the land I live upon. There’s a fluidity I am finding when I feel the strong, low hum of the Earth and I’m following along with the need to explore my own creative practice. Lately I have been expressing, creating, making and producing my inner world into the physical one in an almost constant flow without much distraction and even though I have been quite busy it has brought so many exhale moments, as I like to call them, and relaxation in a whole new way.
Winter is introducing me to the sacred pause but I am figuring out that it can most certainly entail diving into days of expressing myself, it all depends on how I go about it. What a lesson to learn at the end of the year, at the end of this decade.
If you feel called to I would love to invite you to watch my very first video and I hope it can show you the beauty of the Low Land and that it may inspire you to get to know the Earth underneath your feet. (The video is in Dutch but there are English subtitles available.)
I am celebrating the darkness and the return of the Sun and I hope you’ll have a magical ‘Winachten’!
IJsselvrouw 