A Big Sky Day

I saw a glorious sky this morning. I tried to keep my eyes on the road long enough to get my kids to school so I could capture it in the photo above. As teens and pre teens my kids find it embarrassing to have a mom who goes running off into cornfields looking for the perfect angle in which to see the play of light and shadows thru the corn stubble with a camera! Such is life when your mom is an artist!

I find the beautiful scenery and Amish farmland in the Kidron area to be so inspiring! Today was one of those days in which my inspiration tank got filled to the brim. The ‘big sky’ started the day off. Then, while talking to a carpenter at work, my eye caught the intriguing wavy patterns of the wood grain in the slivers of lumber left on the ground while the crew built a garage. (I saved them to use later in a mixed media landscape collage!) Inspiration can come in such strange forms sometimes! I have stopped making excuses for getting excited over these kinds of finds and instead am grateful to be able to find treasures in the unexpected things in life. It does make it hard to stick to a schedule, though! Who would understand being side tracked by wavy slivers of wood? Maybe that’s why I am writing this so those of us with our heads in the clouds aren’t always told, “Hurry up! What are you looking at??? Come on! Do you know what time it is???” Likely not since I am enthralled with visualizing and planning out my next art project while looking at this pile of odd shaped pieces of wood! Who thinks of schedules and time when being inspired? That’s worth something, isn’t it?

This evening more inspiration came my way at the sight of my Amish neighbor’s red barn aglow like burning embers from the setting sun. It was the time of the day when he would of just gotten home from work. I know what likely happened just prior since it happens like this most days. This is the neighbor with the blonde tow headed twin boys of about 3 who wait each evening by the farm gate for their dad to pull into the lane so he can let them climb in the buggy and hold the reins. I got a peek into his life with the silhouette of man and horse outlined in the barn aisle way as he put his horse away and began his evening chores. The image is filed away in my mind like a snapshot framed by the darkened doorway hopefully to be retrieved and reproduced on canvas soon. This became another little sliver of a different sort but just as intriguing, a different life at a different pace. What’s our rush for anyways? Where are we rushing to? Maybe I’ll just go at my own pace and see where it leads. Here’s to more slivers and big sky days! I’d love to hear what you are inspired by. What unexpected place in your life did you find beauty today? You know its there. Look around and tell me what you find. I’d love to hear.