The end of January can be a very blue time in many ways.  It’s cold, much too cold, and I get very weary of being indoors yet cannot make myself go outside much more than to rush from one heated place to another.  So everything looks blue and feels blue.    But as I said last week, blue is my favorite color.  I find it comforting and comfortable and actually cheering rather than “blue” .  (Well, there’s something I might like to follow up with regarding color theory. 🙂 ) January is often a time of reflection also, so blue reflections seemed to fit.  I shared this mandala with you last week with the promise of a peek in to the stages of it’s creation. Blue-Mandala-3_Gail-Haile

I began with the image of the trees and sky reflected in a glass wall.  The first 2 mandalas shown here were created with the usual method that I use for making mandalas.  I didn’t feel that they were particularly compelling, though, so decided to play around with another method I have to create mandalas.   I just kept adding and tweaking and came to the couple of stages that are shown here. There were about 3 other stages before I got to that final one that just seemed to say “yes, this is it”.  Sometimes you just have to listen.

I have been doing a good deal of reflecting and listening to my life lately. Part of what I’m hearing is that I need to share more with you besides mandalas. But I’m also hearing that I need to step back and make more space in my life for creating.    It’s a balancing act as is most of life.  So, starting next week, Mondays will not always be about Mandalas.  There will definitely still be Mandala Mondays at least once if not twice a month, but the other Mondays will bring other work that I am doing.  So tune in next week to see what I’m up to.

How have you been listening to your life lately?