✂️ Last Call
Each month for the past three months, I have experimented with offering Limited Edition Objects. October: Hats. November: Artist Books. I had fun creating each of these handmade objects, so thank you to everyone who participated in this experiment! If you have not ordered yet, today is the last day to get the December Object: a $10 Collage Kit.
🧐Questions for Reflection
There are three questions I ask myself daily as part of a journaling practice. These three questions are tailored to my historical pattern of hyperfixating on the gap between my two selves: the person I am and the person I strive to be, a fixation that easily pains, overwhelms, and thwarts me. These questions are my antidote:
What was great about today?
What do I feel grateful for?
What am I looking forward to?
Thanks to my friend Nihir, I recently added:
What am I proud of?
I love the addition Nihir offers because it rewards efforts in bravery and a turn towards self-compassion.
As 2025 dawns, I also ask myself these questions to help guide my end-of-year reflections and New Year planning:
What do I know/have/experienced now that I didn’t at the start of the year?
First art studio <3
First sales to strangers (!)
Second and third painting series
First and second open studios (April and December)
A beautiful set of oil pastels
Hiked in Azores, Dolomites, and Patagonia
What can I set down (to simplify, focus, or be more compassionate towards myself and others)?
Part of my process this past year was to experiment widely with materials and techniques (soak-stain method, color field, painterly, illustrative, mono-printing with plastic bags, flashe, gouache, acrylic, mylar, oil sticks, oil pastels, raw pigment, making my own paint, copying paintings of others, recreating my paintings in collage, opacity, transparency, value studies, color blot paintings, 100 painting challenge, painting with a veerrrrrrry long brush, collaborating with Processing, found objects, scaling up, scaling down, wood panels, mixed media collage, embroidery, objects, figure drawing, blind contour drawing, drawing while walking, portrait, self-portrait, scribbling, sculpture, stitching canvases together, paper, lipstick, salt). I reached a point now where I crave more focus. A convergence post divergence. My intention for 2025 is to narrow in on a style and materials so I can go deeper into the themes that interest me.
A three-year Duolingo streak. Two days ago, I decided to let it break. Immediately, I felt relieved.
What can I offer?
1% for different environmental and social causes
Community gatherings around art
This newsletter
My story
What truth am I not telling?
The Clan Guthrie motto is Sto Pro Veritate. I stand for the truth. I do not feel fully connected to the truth I am not telling, so this will be a journaling focus for me this year.
Where do I want to challenge myself?
I want to challenge myself to understand my truth, share more of my process and thinking, and narrow my focus to go deeper.
What am I drawn towards but have avoided out of fear?
Bringing personal experiences into my art
Networking in galleries
Landscapes and nature-inspired work
More favorite questions from others:
How do I show up? (Thanks to my new art friend, Unique, for asking me this)
What would this look like if it were easy? (A question I turn to in times of overwhelm, courtesy of Liz Gilbert)
What does love demand of me? (“If you wish to be brave with your life, you have only to ask: what does love demand of me? And keep choosing that, even when it’s hard.” Valerie Kaur, Sage Warrior)
A very big thank you for being here with me this year of firsts and Happy New Year,
XO G