When it comes to teepees, the options are endless. Some of my structures are influenced by authentic Native American design, while others find origination in the imagination alone. I'm loving the simple yet vibrant watercolor splashes and colors.
These are available as prints on my Etsy site.
0 Comments
PATTERN. DESIGN. PATTERN. DESIGN. WATERCOLOR.
In this new experimental series of illustrations, I am combining the intentionality of pattern and design with the immediacy of watercolor. Mix all that up with some cute animals, and BOOM! Some new little friends are born. Hope you enjoy! The world is broken, and this I despise.
Idealistic in nature, when the world is darkened by midnight theater shootings, or painfully sick friends, or lifelong struggles through devastating relationships, or the inevitable death striking final-- everything inside me twists and turns and wrenches apart. I stubbornly plant my heals down firm into the dry, cracked earth of "should be's" all the while watching in delusion as the world sinks lower and lower into the darkness of the broken. My heart looks around and screams loud,"THIS ISN'T HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!" but nothing breathes out except the subtle sound of giving up, "But this is how it is." I can't watch the nightly news. I can't take it in. All that decay and destruction. Is there anything good going on in my city? Of course there is. But even the good, can it be argued that it is whole? My insides revolt in protest as they finally quiet and settle down into momentary acceptance. I accept this marked land for now but not for forever. In the meantime I search the Gospels for Jesus. Is he anywhere to be found in his world so fractured? Selfish. Selfish. Stubborn. Self-Sustaining. Argumentative. Competitive to a Fault. Easily Angered. Loves to be Right. Complaining. Slow to Forgive. Remembering Wrongs. Those words have paraded ugly inside my head since my wedding day nine months ago. They make no assignment to my husband. Rather, they dance around my heart and silently gloat in their description of me. I am incredulous to think these words are new-found married characteristics. Surely they didn't just pop up in these past few months. Yet, they seem new somehow--more harried and pointed. More inescapable. And I guess, in a way, they are. Marriage has been wonderful. It is a whole new adventure filled up with exhilarating realities and still unknown possibilities. My man is unlike any other. Full of compassion and patience, he calms and steadies the artist vibrancy in me. I am grateful, thankful, delighted to be his. Still, marriage has pushed on my heart and stamped on my pride in a way nothing else has been able to thus far. Growing up as one of four brothers and sisters in a tiny house, always sharing and compromise wrestling, I thought I had been well equipped to enter one new house with one new boy. But this beauty, owning another and being covenant owned in love is a different kind of reality. There is no escaping, no hiding your true heart landscape, no retreating to your own room or private soul corner. I am laid open and bare where pretending (even to myself) cannot stand in the brightness of marriage daylight. And this! This is good. This harsh light living is the very thing I needed for the heart sharp edges skillfully concealed in corners to finally be exposed. Marriage is less about my longing for warm fuzzy happiness and more about my deep soul need for conformity to Jesus-likeness. For an artistic idealist, this is a jagged pill to swallow. For a Christian learning to be more in love with Jesus and husband, this is a breath of fresh air. I am thankful for the warm fuzzies and butterflies that accompany marriage. But even more so, I am grateful for the opportunity to come out from hiding, to vulnerably bare all in hopes and trusts that Jesus will continue what he started in me and my husband will continue to delight in the character that is being new birthed. Psalm 119:68 "You (Lord) are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees." I should be in bed.
Although it's late and I need to be winding down for the night, my heart is wound up with many indefinable hopes and excitements in God and his very strange faithfulness toward me (us). If his constancy toward me was based on who I am and the character found therein, indeed there could be no sensible accounting for it. Tonight I am reminded once again of the good news of the Gospel. (I could never be reminded too much or too often.) God's faithfulness and loyalty to me is based on his ever steady character. A character filled up with mercy and tempered with justice. He looks at me and sees his perfection-- Jesus the Christ. So in this vein, and very quickly before I turn in for the night I want to remind myself and you of Psalm 46:10. It is a verse plastered all over coffee cups and the backs of youth group t-shirts but for whatever reason feels fresh to my heart and mind tonight. “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” How good is he! God is good. He is what's best. Let's be still and look on him and know him and fill up with joy at what we see. |
welcome Audrey DeFord is an artist, illustrator, wife, momma, believer. But not in that order. She currently resides in Texas with her husband Sam, baby girl Flora, French bully Shortstack, & 12
chickens. Categories
All
Archives
January 2016
|