So today marks the first day of the Chinese New Year 2014 which is the year of the Wood Horse. Since I am a Fire Horse and wood is fuel for fire, I am thinking this will be a great year for me to get things accomplished. That and the fact that it is a WOOD year and well mesquite IS a type of WOOD - I am taking that as a good thing! Guess only time will tell....
The year has gotten off to a bumpy start with a rather lengthy 12 day hospital stay with my father. Hopefully we are through the worse part but we will just take it all one day at a time. My personal goal this year of the "Horse" will be to create a horse every day in some type of artistic medium. I hope to have quite a horse collection at the end of this year and maybe discover some things about myself that I did not know. It will be part of my getting back to myself and uncovering my artistic side. I only hope I can stick with it.
With the approach of Valentine's Day I have spent a little time focused on heart. I recently came across this quote at the end of a beautiful letter written by Ted Hughes to his son:
"The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all." -Ted Hughes
Lou and I have invested not only time and money, but heart in this mesquite furniture journey, because working with mesquite is what makes his heart sing. We have ignored our fears and the warnings of others. It is at times scary and we have been known to ask ourselves "what were we thinking?" but all in all it has supported us and lead us to grow not only as artists but also in heart.
This year we have some exciting, challenging new projects in house. We look forward to sharing them here and hope that you will check back each month to see how we are doing.
“The analogy between the artist and the child is that both live in a world of their own making,” -Anaïs Nin
Ted Hughes' letter discusses in great detail the inner child and how it has such limited experience in living because most of the time we are protecting it. I hope this year I can let my child out to play and experience life and create a beautiful world of my own making. I also hope that you will let yours out to play.
And now for an early Valentine's Day SURPRISE to Lou a little :
