When I set out for Australia nearly three years ago I saw it as a grand adventure.
As is always the case it was more work, hard work, than I expected.
If I had known this beforehand, as they say, I would never have gone…
Or maybe I would have…
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The returning from grand experiences, those we have poured our heart and soul, reveals the truth of what they really were.
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I’m getting to that returning just now. The part that is teaching me what it was really about.
Not at all surprisingly I’ve discovered
I was not on mission to evangelize encaustic
I was on pilgrimage;
set off on a journey of self discovery.
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The truth of our life is much clearer from the edges.
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EncaustiCamp was this grand adventure five years ago. And it is my greatest creation.
(gingerangas aside of course!)
I tried to quit it. I couldn’t hold it to the original design
so I tried to quit it.
What I have realized though?
It was this original design that was dead; quit.
God help us; just five years ago?! We look sooooo much younger….
I was keeping it on life support; Frantically feeding it my ambition
as if this were nutritious and life-giving.
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Australia slowed me down.
It took wearing me out to the edges of myself to see what I need to see.
I had to find the ‘real’ behind what I was doing.
EncaustiCampInt’lAU 2014
I thought I was doing a necessary service in killing EncaustiCamp-
unhooking the life support system to which I stubbornly strapped it.
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What I discovered, much to my surprise, was that it still breathed on its own.
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It didn’t need me keeping it alive.
I needed it keeping me alive.
EncaustiCamps creation: Book signing of Encaustic Revelation
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EncaustiCamp is a community.
It is a place.
It is people.
EncaustiCamp was born as a place to experience heaps of encaustic.
It has grown into a place to experience heaps of community.
-Sure, making
encaustic.
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It has been a month since EncaustiCamp 2015 concluded.
I asked your comments and critiques be held off until now. Thank you for so doing.
The few I have received have done something
moved me to this place of discovery
of courageously, confidently being able to say I can let go of my original design for EncaustiCamp,
realizing it’s dead already,
and let it breath on its own.
EncaustiCamp has a vitality, integrity, purpose it’s own now.
I’ve been graced to have given it life;
from here, I serve to grow it up-
My eyes have been opened to the valuable growing place that is the ‘real’ of EncaustiCamp.
It has spurred me to listen to what it can become as it grows
and let the exciting, great ideas speak.
In short, EncaustiCamp is old enough to tell me what it needs, and I am confident enough to listen and take on the work.
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I get to.
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EncaustiCamp 2016 will be changed. It has grown up and become something new.
Whiskery-chinned and ache be-speckled-
I love it none the less.
I get to walk alongside, evolving in my role
confidently doing the work I get to
as long as I get to.
In the next few weeks I will share with you what I am seeing for next year in its new alliteration.
Then it is time for you to step up and claim your purpose and place in it.
In the community it has become.
By October 28 I will need 35 expressions of interest in order to assuredly hold Dumas Bay for our group.
‘Newbie’ interest, ‘lifer’ interest, instructor interest-
We are all needed. We all belong.
We are all part of what is EncaustiCamp.
I offer you the assurance of my continued leading and forming EncaustiCamp
I need in return your show of support in continuing the beautiful part you play.
It will take us all, we all play a vital role
we always have.
We always will.
in love.
trish
I am not sure when I may comment on what Encaustic AU meant for me? So ignore it if it is not for now. But I have the courage to say it now.
The first time we met in 2013, I heard that encaustic is not about painting glossy cards with a clever movement of an iron as I was demonstrated in Belgium in 2006 and trained in Holland to do in 2007.
And you witnessed my battle with the wax that did not want to go where I wanted it to go in May 2104. Then you brought other teachers to EncasuticampAU. And between you four, you managed to swift my paradigm of art – to explore outside of the lines. Even getting my hands wet and making my own paper! And there was talk about mark-making and layers and mono-printing and patterns and collage and mixed media and I did not know what you were talking about! And talk of a re-meet in Italy in 2016.
So this year I set out to prepare for Italy. I was going to find out what these foreign concepts were.So this year I enrolled in an art university library and I started watching video’s on line. And discovered YouTube. And learned and experimented with mixed media. There were days that I forgot to eat. I even enrolled and completed a number of on-line courses. And started layered printing and using the prints in collages and explored with patterns and mark-making and playing with different media. I even learned how to draw faces! And learned that art is in essence an expression of one’s inside.
So Trish, that is what the camp meant for me. It turned me inside out, stretched me into areas I have only learned about recently and challenged me to account for this growth when we met again in italy.
My focus for 2016 is to apply all that I have learned this year in working with wax.
Thank you.
Brenda, Wow. Read into that like you know you are meant to but for here just, Wow. Thank you. xo
This is beautiful, what EncaustiCamp has become and evolving into is beautiful, and I’m all in! I’m so glad I “Get to”!
Yes please. Me. In line. To create and breathe and help in any way i can. Next year.
You’re held to that Linda <3 xo
Like it or not I too am all in!! Why? Because I also “get to.”
<3 whoha :)