Tomorrow afternoon, I conclude my residency at Createspace Wales, and head back to Cardigan for a night before going to London the next day. I get a few days in London with my husband, before the whole adventure is over.

It feels like I just got here, and that I could keep going for weeks. And it also feels like I have been gone a long time, and I have learned a lot, and it is time to head home.

I wish there was a succinct way to put into words what this experience has met, but it is something that will unfold, over time. It is just the beginning of something, of a way of being, that I long knew was there inside me, but kept buried forever.

It is a part that harkens back to my childhood, where I wandered the mountains and plains of Colorado for hours, with no direction or purpose, just to see and feel and walk. The part that created things, objects, images, until late into the night, without the intention of marketing it on social media later. It is the part that is not cynical or resentful of the way the “art world” works, or that I feel (at times) that I am not within the “in” crowd, but that is pure, and joyful, and looks at the possibilities of art, of all types of art, with fresh, open eyes. Eyes of welcome and learning.

I am not saying this residency fixed anything, only that it awakened me. As I said, this is just the beginning. The question becomes (and I have asked it before) how will I integrate all of this into my life, and how I will take these fresh eyes back to the studio, and create new work?