A new year is here...

Happy New Year everyone! 2011 is upon us, and of course we all hope it will be a cracking year full of good health, happiness and success. I am hoping for that really hard to be honest as 2010 has been a very difficult year for me personally, with the loss of my father as the biggest shock. I've gone through a lot of 'falling down and getting up' episodes, and overall think I've come out stronger. You know the old saying: that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Life is a journey, and to see it as such and take all that happens to us as a process of learning and growing up and evolving is all part of that journey.

2011 will be a year of taking on more portrait commissions for me, I have several projects waiting in the wings so watch this space, but it is also a year of expanding my website design business. January esp. will be a very busy month for me with that side of my business as I have a lot of different projects on the go right now. Part of my work is creative and part is technical, and I find that one complements the other very well. I enjoy both, my website development work challenges me and keeps me on my toes, and my portrait work is a sea of possibility where anything could and usually does work by itself, mindful of a few parameters of course.

Just letting the pencils tell the story is something I've always found incredibly liberating and mind expanding. Creating art is freedom, freedom to travel anywhere and focus in detail on feelings and moments in time that are only a split second in someone's life, an animal's life.... captured for eternity. That idea is and always will be so exciting for me and fills me with love and gratitude.

I hope for both you and me, 2011 will be filled with such moments of creative joy and beauty and that it will be a year of introspection and consideration.

Mother and Child