When Imagination Meets Reality.

I've found myself fascinated with butterflies for the past 9 months or so. Oh, you noticed? Yeah, I guess it's been hard to miss, huh?

It started as a weird dream where my whole family – husband, both punks and the dog – all turned into butterflies and flew away without me. I had it a couple of times and chalked it up to lack of sleep and chemo drugs, both sure to fry a neuron or two.

Then I started envisioning drawings where colors swirled and bright butterflies were formed out of the mixture of hues. They all had that loose, spontaneous watercolor look that I love, but never seem to be able to accomplish myself.

Recently I decided to tell that pesky inner critic we all hear to shut up and started throwing watercolor at the pages. I had a lot of close-but-not-quites before stumbling into this piece over the weekend. I'd planned to make three bookmarks out of an 8x8 piece of paper and ended up really hating where the butterflies ended up getting cut in pieces.

I've gotten better over the years at making things work instead of just tossing what isn't going well. I looked at the whole page and then doodled – I know, I was shocked, too! I've always said I'm an artist who can't doodle – that branch across the page.

I went back in, pumped up some of the color, inked a few lines over, stepped back and saw one of the images I've been imagining sitting on my table.

Huh!

And while I waited for different parts to dry, I made a bookmark, too.

Not bad for the first weekend and Monday of 2014!