These gratitude journal pages cover most of November. In creating all the art for my current exhibit I fell behind in my gratitude journal. The recent election results give me hope for the future. I just hope that immigrants, people with health problems, those who face economic challenges and all of us who hope to believe in democracy can hold on until the 2018 election. The layers of red text on the left hand page were created with inspiration from Claudia McGill’s handwriting explorations. The right hand page is lots of influence from the collage class I have been taking.

I want to come back to the red text. It was made from an image I created with my therapist. She is an art therapist and I make very different things in there than I do at home. Here is a recent one. This is how I feel about doctors in general and being diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 50. I don’t generally enjoy working with oil pastels, but in this context they are perfect.

They also work as an interesting transfer. I then flipped this over and wrote in 2 directions on the back to do some journaling about my recent health exploits in my gratitude journal. That is what appears so subtly on the left hand page. I think I’m going to have to explore this combination of techniques some more. This was very therapeutic.