A Foggy Friday after an inspiring Thursday

Several days have gone by since my last post and the weather has changed dramatically from beautiful, clear, and warm to wintery, frigid, and foggy. It's amazing how much of an overnight process going from fall to winter can be in the San Joaquin Valley.

Last night I returned from a the Bay Area late after a wonderful day spent in Berkeley with my friend, Grace Rankin. I went from doing a presentation in Lodi on Wednesday to Berkeley on Thursday morning. Grace and I met and spent the day looking around, visiting, and browsing Berkeley's Utrecht and Dick Blick art stores and having a nice relaxed lunch at a Thai restaurant. The opportunity to visit and "talk art" with an artist friend reminded me of Julia Cameron's suggestion that artists block out time each week for both a long walk and an "artist date". In both "The Artist's Way" and "The Sound of Paper",  she writes of the importance of taking time each week to recharge our creativity by walking and playing, allowing ourselves time to look at beautiful things or things that inspire us or just talking with another artist in a setting that motivates us. I've found her suggestion to allot time each and every week for ourself, as an artist, to be invaluable. If you haven't read her books, look for them at the library or bookstore and start planning your own "Artist Date" for next week!

Another thing she suggests is writing "morning pages" each day and I suspect blog entries could become the new format for those pages. I wonder what Julia would say about that idea. Hmmmmmm. . . . . .