Lost - Illustration Friday July 13

Inspired by the Illustration Friday challenge word: Lost.

This is the latest in a series of drawings, springing from a flow of thought, questions, a tangle of process and sifting of intention.

I had nearly finished a drawing begun with relish and found my enthusiasm for the image had drained completely.  It wasn't a bad drawing, and sincerely enjoyed elements in it, but it wasn't saying what had crept up on me as I pondered the word long enough to work with it.

So I gave my pencil freedom to just draw - and kept adding to something that made sense to me.

Lost - as in fragmented, whirlwinded, energetically DOING and yet not coherent in being.  An energy, an entity, but not grounded.  At times, overwhelmed with calls on our time we might turn around and wonder when we last did something that arose from inside ourselves, an expression of self, rather than responded to an outside need or demand.  Finding we are defining our days and by that our selves through what we DO, and lose our grip on that too.   

And strangely, of the calls on our time that come from outside, most were put in place by choices we made, that we wholeheartedly DID want to do.

It is odd, that we can feel lost even in the midst of following choices we have made ourselves - if we have lost track of where that choice arose, or how it might develop, change, diminish over time and yet an obligation tends to grow - and we find ourselves defined from the outside and expressing the inner self less and less.

I enjoy the feel of batik that this image has attained through manipulation -  batik begins as the tracery of hot wax on fabric -  after colours are applied, often in an intricate sequence, the cooled wax is eventually heated until  it vapourizes and only the colours remain.  A clear image, though the negative of what originally was.