ButterflyWoman

A watercolor incorporating digital techniques.

This image is currently featured in the Healing Through Art Group

I merge my woman self with my butterfly self and feel completeness. The flowing, transparent nature of watercolor seems to fit with how I am allowing myself to flow with whatever emerges from within. I melt, letting go of resistance. And I am transparent, like the paints, allowing my true deep self to shine through the layers and out into the world. I used every color of the rainbow and beyond when I created this image as a way to leave behind the drabness of my previous life and celebrate who I was becoming now.

I feel I am always in a state of self-transformation. Every minute of the day, whether I am creating or moving along on my life journey, there is change to encounter, and along with that, growth.Nothing is static, but rather cyclic and I embrace that as a challenge to get to the light.

There are still times, though less often, when I want to go into my cocoon and not come out, fearing the consequences of my actions. But these moments are becoming fewer, and I’d much rather fly these days. That’s what those wings are for, after all.

I very much relate to the butterfly and its own transformative, cyclic nature. Taking some thoughts from Jamie Sams, who wrote “Medicine Cards”, I used them as a jumping off point for who I am always evolving into. I can use the following stages as a checking off point as to where I am at at any given point.

1. Egg stage – the beginning of all things
2. Cocoon stage – going within, developing myself and specific
aspects of personality
3. Leaving chrysalis – Birth
4. Sharing colors and joy of creation with world

The image above symbolizes personal transformation, and especially represents the turning point in my life when I embraced myself as a creative being. I became aware of how light I was becoming and how I wanted to fly high, shouting to the world that I was worthy! And I am worthy now and I spread my wings wide to share my gifts.