So on the July 21 (which is just days away) I will turn 29... It is strange to mark the passage of time, where did it go? This third decade looming ahead of me, it seems as though it will be better than the last one, but it is also very strange to think of the passage of time, as so many of my friends are just begining their 20s and I am closing mine out. Ah the many transformations that have taken place...

What have I become?
What WILL I become?

...who knows? I know I certainly didnt see a great many of the plot twists comming, and I have no doubt there are more on the horizon.

I have been quite a busy girl, extremely prolofici as far as ideas go, I suppose I should do some sketch dumps, as soon as I can categorize everything... which, like so much these days seems to fall under the category of "I will get to it at some point".

My main focus has been on adjusting to the many new lifestyle changes, and taking the time to appriciate and ENJOY them. Also I am gearing up for the big reveal of the long secret project (which a few of you already know about) just because its reaching the stage where its just about "ready" to become bigger than just me.

My other big deal lately has been the books I am writing, so there will be little short stories popping up as text deviations also (I really wish I was getting more input on those, as that Tale I posted has had some significant tweaks in the past month or so, and now is less busy and far more sleek) I am also sleeking up and adapting a retelling of the story of ABJER, the horse of Antar... a powerful legend that is over 5000 years old, for the way I heard it is much to confusing, and I am cutting it down to MY impressions of it... and the tale of the ORIGINAL Black Stallion, who destroyed an army and embodied the concept "My Kingdom for a Horse", did impress me greatly... as I have become known as "Mistress of the Night Horses" and having my own black Mares be exhaulted as having "few peers, in all the world" I think perhaps it did exercise some influence upon me with its fierce romance. To this day when I read that story from an old book of horse mythology, tears stream down my face as the tale closes... for it is a terrific love story.

I have found myself influenced strongly lately by Loreena McKennitt's music, and finding myself sketching out many of the subjects of which she sings. From "the Lady of Shalott" to "the Two Trees" (Classical poetry adapted to music), I find myself sketching the haughty lady of "Green Sleeves", and wanting to add color to everything just because the use of color is so vibrant and defining a trait for her, or the simple evocation of emotional responses, which swell forth to the music as "I hear some distant drumbeat, the hearbeat pulsing low, is it comming from within me? This heartbeat I DONT KNOW?" My recent pregnancy sort of makes me FEEL something profoundly different considering those words, and their weight of meaning, than it would have before... and has me seeing new shapes in my mind to accompany them.

My return to my homeland has been making me feel a stirring within me, a re-awakening, for the mythology here is so powerful and vivid, and lyrically beautiful, it has me telling my own story, and the many adventures I have had are comming into focus in unexpected ways as I adapt them for my books, but also just in the looking upon them with the new perspective of having been removed from them, and being able to see them not as events happening TO me now, but rather as these great adventures and trials that were undertaken, perhaps not by me, but by anyone... its part of the HUMAN experience, and seeing them removed from their immediacy, really lets me see myself in a different light than I had before.

I have filled 5 sketch books in about as many weeks, and am comming to a place where I am developing such a huge body of subjects that I am ready to begin painting again. I am also really starting to tinker with digital stuff a bit more, but while you can do more with it and far more easily, I am still finding the process far less fulfilling than the very organic process of creativity that I know and am so much more at peace with. To paint or sculpt for me is a SLOW DANCE, and I view all things in life as a dance... I was born a dancer, so this is how I experience the world... its all very expressive and emotive, and I still am finding the digital process to be somewhat COLD and mechanical. And while I am makeing an effort to MAKE IT MY OWN, and to IMPOSE my own sensibilities on it, to try and make it a dance, there is just part of it that feels a little bit "Soulless". Perhaps that is not the correct term, but that is what the feeling is I get from it alot, and for me the whole creative process is very ORGANIC, perhaps that is the better term for it, to say that the degital medium is "INorganic"... its a bit more Pollitically correct than I care to invest effort in though and I am just going to be the artist and express as I feel rather than putting it on too tight a leash.

My other project is a tattoo design, I want it to be a process... but there will be more on that later, when some of the ideas become deviations.

Much love to you all
Miss Morrighan