What the Lake Brought (an introduction)

I have not always considered myself an artist.  For years, art has taken a sideline in my life to other practical or even creative pursuits.  Art was on the periphery in high school, college and even grad school.  Ceramics, drawing and painting were always around the edges of my academics but I never really accepted myself as a person who made art.  Other people were much more creative, or had a better vision or were more technically excellent.  I was just an imitator of a real artist. 

The lake started to change the way I saw myself and inspired me to press forward with my vision and dedication to what I wanted to create.  However, it took many trips to the lake for me to arrive where I am now in the space of Walking Craft Studio. 

I can still remember the moment I was called to the lake.  It was early morning on my bus ride to work and I had been pondering whether I should attend Squam Art Workshop.  I had read about the gathering, knew that it may be the final opportunity to attend, but was unsure about going on my own.  This was 2017 and I was just starting to spread my wings again as my child entered Kindergarten.  Seeing the sun rise over Lake Washington in Seattle, the place I consider home, drove a sharp feeling through me and I registered for the retreat as the bus curved me around towards work.  I strongly felt that I had to go seek out this other lake. I could not resist the impulse to go take part in the retreat, but I had no idea how deeply moving the gathering at Squam Lake would be that year or the subsequent years I have gone. 

Every year I am changed by the lake. 

Every visit I have grown closer to the artist I want to be. 

What the lake brings cannot be easily described in words but it is a palpable feeling for me.  It is the weathered wood of the docks.  It is the history of connection and gathering over time.  It is a creative tribe full of people who need to make things with their hands just as much as you need it.  It is the stillness and reflection of water. It is vision and love and belonging. 

My most recent visit to Squam Lake was two years ago.  This is when I felt moved to take my art more seriously and knew that watercolor painting was my medium.  The pandemic took a lot from me, but it also gave me painting.  In the darkest times of isolation I took up watercolors and found community with online classes.  At Squam, I was in a workshop, learning the way of traditional Katazome and creating my own design when one of the artists helping with the class said a thing that changed me.  He admired my marks and "hand" in the design I was creating.  He said it reminded him of his own work.  I was thoroughly enjoying the creative process but his words drove something home.  In that wooden building, surrounded by creative people, I realized that I have a "hand" and create unique beauty in my marks. 

I can create marks through painting that no one else can make.  My abstractions of  landscapes are not groundbreaking, but they are my vision of how the world looks, expressed through color and form.  They are my offering of an inner landscape, too.

So, here I am, offering those inner and outer landscapes.  Thank you for sharing them with me.  In a few weeks, I will return to the lake and see what it will offer me this time around.