Saturday morning, I think . . .

My son is really battling this flu and I have not slept proper hours or in the proper place since Wednesday. I woke up on the couch in a panic that everyone had overslept this morning and I had only been asleep for 2 hours, forgot it was Saturday. Went back to cat napping until a few minutes ago. I wanted to get this piece up before I tackle the day. Posting the piece helps me move onto the next one. Sometimes, I just get tired of working on the same piece, like this one. Now that she's done I've thought of some ways I 'd like to rework parts of it, but alas, I am tired of this one and posting it makes it done.

Fig. 23. Inner Beauty


copyright by Marsha Jorgensen 1.30.09
5 x 7 collage using vintage images from paperstreet.etsy.com, reprinted, further hand-colored, and carefully trimmed and arranged with butterflies used with a license agreement with Butterfuly Utopia, and other images from flickr's collage images group. All are arranged on a 100 year old encyclopedia page with originally made trim and label.

About this piece . . .
I am not as happy with this figure as the first two. I was struggling with how to say what I wanted and I just didn't find the way I wanted. This piece was inspired from the lady and her post I suggested you read in another post on my blog. I don't know Karin of Creative Chaos very well but I've been following her blog since I discovered it through the One World One Heart blog event. The piece she wrote about losing her hair in her battle against cancer is still so moving to me, I think of it everyday. It was so profoundly and beautifully written. I told my husband last night that she is a hero to me, that I wish I could muster up just an ounce of her integrity and strength and most beautiful spirit to battle my everyday mundane life, let alone should I ever have to fight as something as big as she is - with such poise and honesty and humor and being real. This piece is my way of saying she is just as beautiful without hair as she is with it, that she is a true example of beauty coming from within - that she is prettier than what SHE sees in the mirror, her true reflection is much more beautiful than she even knows. So maybe, because of her, I had a lot of expectations for this piece and a lot that I wanted to convey and my disappointment in it stems from just plain old biting off more than I could chew on this one. The number 23 comes from the date she learned she had cancer.