Here we are, poised on the edge of the new year. It’s a time for reflection, for taking a deep breath, looking back and looking forward.

It’s time for me to finally leave Playastan behind and move on to new work. I took a little time away from the holiday home scene yesterday to tidy up the studio. I have trouble moving forward with new work with the studio in disarray. The mess is for when I’m deep in projects, the detritus of progress building up on horizontal surfaces and amassing in drifts in the corners. For now, the surfaces are clear and ready for the next thing.

I’ve decided that the time is done for dithering around, wondering what to do next. I have the urge to make new work. It’s been too long since my hands manipulated materials, too long since I loosed both my creative and critical minds.

I spent some time yesterday looking through  sketchbooks from as far back as 2009, marking drawings that have promise but haven’t been developed. Then did some drawing from those sketches, teasing out their essence, making marks and visualizing them as objects. Next week I’ll start building in three-dimensions, following the familiar road back to productivity. Now isn’t the time to reinvent myself and my work, it’s time to get busy.

Anna’s Hummingbirds visit my garden year-round, feeding on the flowers of the arbutus uneedo (Strawberry Tree) this time of year. They have been pretty quiet during the cold and wet weather we’ve been having. When the sun comes out they zoom about, feeding and warming themselves before the clouds move in again. I got a photo of this one resting in the sun in our cotinus coggygria, or Purple Smoke Bush. Even the hummingbird pauses, perhaps for a moment’s reflection, before whirring off into the future.