Holding On

While walking to the school bus yesterday, I came across a tiny, flowered branch that had fallen off of a tree. 

It was beautiful.

I wanted to preserve it.

Immediately I began dreaming of ways to incorporate it into an encaustic piece.  

During studio time, it was the first thing I went to.  I kept trying to get it in the position I had envisioned.  It wasn't staying in the heated wax I'd applied, so I tried more beeswax.  When that didn't work, I pulled out the super glue.  When THAT didn't work, I went crazy with some odd mix of crazy-glue-and-wax goop.

That worked.

It took several hours to apply the wax and delicately scrape around the flower petals, to use the tweezers to place each bud where I wanted it, to make the surrounding colors flow in a pleasing pattern.

Holding On, 6X6, encaustic and mixed media on wood panel

I am very happy with the final piece.  But, as always, it isn't the art piece that keeps strumming the chords of my awareness.

To be honest, I have no idea how long those flower petals will stay like that.  I don't know if, over time, they will succumb to the air, become brittle, brown, or simply crumble away.

I tried to hold onto the beautiful piece of nature.

I tried to hold onto my image of how I wanted the art to look.

I tried to encapsulate it all, make it stay just as it was...as I wanted it to be.

Such is not the nature of life, nor the life of nature.

If this piece begins to change form, I will be ok with that.  I will honor the true nature of what I have created...and what I have borrowed from nature's creation.  

And as I change, as others around me change, as seasons change and my attitudes and beliefs change, as my children change, and as everything

keeps

changing....

I will practice not holding on.

I invite you into the same practice.

Namaste.