Thursday 26 July 2012

Introducing Project40

I am 7 months and 7 days away from turning the BIG 4.0. I am both loving and afraid of all I am discovering in turning 40 and that in many regards, I feel like my life has only really just began and other times my life seems to be happening too fast for my liking. My girls are growing up at a pace that takes my breath away. I am finding grey hairs, very long grey hairs in my mop of long hair. My body shape and face is changing every time I look in the mirror and at times I love that fact that I am growing to accept my now womanly body and shape and my new sense of style that goes with accepting oneself, perhaps for the first time in my life.  There was a time as a young mother, I felt people saw me more as the aupair to my girls than their mother but now there is no mistaking that I am their mother. There is something strangely beautiful in that too. In my workshop book that I got this year, Unfurling, Misty Mawn has a whole section on Self Portraits and starts off this section with this quote "I paint self portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best" - Frida Kahlo. I have never painted a self portrait and don't often take pictures of myself, so this will be new ground for me. In a way, I love this quote and this exercise because I think perhaps I have never really known myself at all and for the first time, I am discovering who I really am and I would like to know this new me best. I have decided to do this exercise in doing #40 different self portrait shots and placing them in homemade journal. There are almost 20 theme ideas in the book, which I will use and then I will add to that another 20, as a symbolic journey of me turning 40. The idea has been playing in my mind for a while but last night I couldn't sleep with all the ideas swirling around my head.

I am not taking this {exciting one minute - scary the next} journey alone... my running and creative buddy, Mel is journeying with me... she also turns #40 this year. So we will journey together through our self portraits and see what we find, or rather WHO we find on the other end!

2 comments:

  1. Yip, I agree - this is a very exciting and significant time in life and I love what you and Mel are planning to do.
    Really wringing all the juice out of it and storing it for future viewing . . .
    I wish I had had the wit and the insight when I was that age!
    I enjoyed life as never before but never thought to document it -

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  2. Thank you Allie - this is so wonderful to hear. It's proving to be such a significant year for me and what better way to see it in, than picture document it. PS: It's never too late to start!!!

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