In a so many ways—personally and collectively—2020 has been crazy, sucky year, but what got me through? Basically three things: hiking and streamed workouts in my living room, reading—and especially my art practice. I sat down almost every day at my art table. I filled almost five journals with words and pictures and created more than a few drawings and paintings that filled me with joy—and make me happy still.

I thought it would be fun to bring together my very favorites of the year so here goes!

As the year began…

Pre lockdown, January found me fully engaged in my second art class at the Community College San Francisco, Intermediate Drawing, with the oh so talented and inspiring teacher, Diane Olivier. I had just completed Basic Drawing in the fall, and as my first experience ever taking art classes, I loved it!

The lockdown hit us here in March and before I knew it, my drawing class was gone, not to mention all the other things that came to a sudden halt.

Spring was a blur…

Like so many of us, it took me a while to adjust and I can see now that creatively, I pretty much came to a halt too. I did not work on drawings at all. Instead I turned to my writing journal with all the unsettled and fearful feelings, filling one and half books between March and July. Interestingly, I also created several visual journal spreads in this time period that I now see as SO expressive of what I was going through. I am so glad I have these pages now! Here are a few:

By summer I was on new ground…

If my art practice is any indication, it took me to about June/July to fully adjust and adapt to the new normal. From the beginning, I kept to a pretty tight workout schedule, shifting to streamed exercise classes in my living room and three or more days a week hiking the redwoods. Dennis and I found a comfortable daily routine around the house, 24/7. We started doing takeout dinners once a week, instituted Friday movie night and we began to venture out into outdoor spaces with other humans.

My daily art practice shifted. While before, I had instituted a pretty firm commitment to myself to “create something even if for 15 minutes”, which meant I was fitting it in between other priorities that filled my days—now I took it to the next level.

With all this uninterrupted time gifted to me, the commitment became in 2020 to spend several hours per day on my art practice. To finally work as if it was my actual work—to commit, I now see, to myself.

And then the drawing really began again…

Here are my very favorite drawings I made in basically the second half of 2020—after I finally settled in and realized the pandemic wasn’t going to end soon.

After I realized that maybe, just maybe, the universe was giving me the nudge I needed.

I got into drawing fairy tales for a bit. I want to do more. I like these two:

And then there were the art Challenges…

Art challenges prompt my way into creating. For a couple of months I created weekly drawings for the #transmundanetuesdays challenge hosted by Carson Ellis on Instagram. These are my favorites:

But the main drawing challenge of the year for me was #Inktober, a global event now on Instagram where participants draw one drawing with ink every month in October. I completed all 31 days this year (all posted on Instagram). I love these the best:

And then the year came to a close…finally!

By the time I finished Inktober I was exhausted!

Challenges are SO GOOD for growth and output—and I really feel like I stretched into a creative place—but I needed a break after that.

I continued my daily art practice in November and December, but I didn’t share it instagram. We are ending the year in lockdown again, and in a way my creative work went underground again as it did at the beginning of lockdown.

However, this time I wasn’t processing the shock so much as leaning into greater determination to go into the next year and out of the pandemic (soon, soon!) more self- empowered.

What I didn’t quite realize at the time is that I was laying the groundwork, creatively, for larger projects that I am very excited to share in January, 2021.

But In the meantime, I can honestly say that 2020 was the suckiest of suck years in so many ways, but this year gave me the huge gift of much greater clarity and connection to my art. I know all of us are seeing the gifts that were presented to us in this year of pause, too. For me, I was given the gift of uninterrupted time to find my real work—and for that I will forever be grateful.