You will know where to find me

I made a new book for fine-artist and poet Beverley Fry.
It’s the first book I made for a client.

If I hadn’t already written and published Happy Tango (which journeys on successfully with its own Updates Blog and Facebook page), I would never have known how to make a book and bring it to market for someone else. If I hadn’t followed my own heart and flown to Buenos Aires to dance, Happy T. would not have been born and Beverley would not have Panning in her hand. I see the books I create for others as realisations of their dreams.

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I built a website for editor, Helen Coyle. It’s the first website I made for a client.

At the photo shoot for the ‘Meet the Editor’ page of IndyEditorial.com Helen shone with light and delight. The photographer Julie-Anne Cosgrove captured Helen’s brilliance perfectly. I saw with my own eyes the product of talented people working together, combining skills and gifts to create something greater than any of them could produce alone. If I hadn’t started writing a Wordpress blog in January 2007 and continued to write it in various incarnations for four years, I would not be in a position to design websites for others. You can see the products of my design work at facebook.com/sallyblakedesigns. I see my websites as celebrations of the amazing individuals I make them for, and as catalysts for connection between those individuals and their clients.

I am writing my second book. I’m writing it live at facebook.com/happyheartsquest (if you would like more joy in your life, you can read and enjoy the Tasks even if you’re not on Facebook).

If the book’s ideas inspire and transform the lives of others as they have already transformed me, I shall be delighted. My job is simply to write the remaining pages. That I know I can do. If I hadn’t written a blog and then a book, I wouldn’t have developed the confidence to start creating the HappyHeartsQuest. There will be a website too one day at happyheartsquest.com but I’m not quite ready for that yet. I see the HappyHeartsQuest as a part of my purpose for being on this earth.

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Since February 2011, I have been painting. You can see my paintings at sallyblakedesigns.co.uk/art. At the moment (update added April 2012) I’m painting Buenos Aires cityscapes, like this one.

When I paint, I become someone I love. The Higher Me. The painting comes heart and soul direct to hand. There is no head involved at all. When I look at my paintings it is as if I did not do them. Someone I love tells me I was an artist in a past life. The way I put my paints, three brushes and two plastic pots into a carrier bag and head off around the city to paint without fuss is so relaxed, that I actually think she may be right. Yet, if I hadn’t began to free my artist’s spirit with dancing first, I don’t  think I would ever have picked up a paintbrush and brandished it with such joy. I see my paintings as the results of my hand recording the energy that I see onto paper. I record the connections between me and my subjects, with paint, and I understand connections because I once, long long ago now, began to dance tango.

Tota my wise astrologer and soul guide told me a little story.

A woman sees an artist she recognises (Picasso, say his name was) in the street. She asks him to paint her portrait. He says yes. He goes to her home. In less than 10 minutes he has her energy captured there on the canvas in paint. Finished. She asks the price. $10000 dollars he says. No way, says she. It only took you 10 minutes. Er, no madam, says Picasso. There I am afraid that you are wrong. It took me my whole life.

All that I do and work in now has taken me at least forty-eight years to learn, and over four years of those have been lived fairly publicly here, on this blog. But my life goes back way beyond January 2007 and the very first post on Sallycat’s Adventures. My ancestors. My parents. My nature. My nurture. My careers. My miscarriages. My horrors. My delights. My marriages. The games I have played. The drinks I have drunk or not. The degrees I have studied. The gardens I have made. The love I have known. Many who have read me here on Sallycat’s Adventures have understood me and valued my words and celebrated my efforts. Others have not understood me at all because their own stories have meant that they could not. Both are OK. Both have taught me much. Both are included in my forty-eight years and so go in to everything I now create, go into my ever-expanding portfolio of life-work.

Without every single person who has read this blog or commented on it, I would not be the deeply creative and productive and joyful human being that I have become. Well, I would have had the seed in me, but it may not have blossomed into its beautiful flower.

I thank every one of you from the bottom of my creative heart. I ask you to support me in any of my new ventures that appeal to you. If my stuff does not appeal to you, I am equally happy. But, please make the most of every minute you have and go forth and make great life-works of your own.

And there I think I will leave it. If I do not write here again, you will know where to find me. At my creative cauldron. Making magic.