Dipping into the Sketchbook Archives to Get my Groove Back

This drawing and the two below dating back to my twenties, when I was a weaving student in western North Carolina and lived in an authentic log cabin that had been brought down the mountain by mule, in pieces, and reconstructed next to a brook and a stand of oak trees.

And from my memoir, Girl from Nantucket, describing three months that should have been junior year of high school:

“Left with hours to myself every day, I spent much of it drawing. Real life subjects held little interest for me. Rather, my inspiration resided inward. I filled my notebook with intricate abstract mosaics, covering each page with clusters of contrasting visual textures that were bound by irregular, geometric outlines, architecturally inspired. Tiny painted areas of jewel-toned blends stayed carefully within the delicate black outlines.

When I wasn’t drawing, I took to the streets of Greenwich Village. Embraced by the flow of pedestrians I was a girl in a bubble, silent and walking, walking for hours alone.” — Lisa Allen Lambert

Are there elements in these drawings that, once identified, will catapult me forward out of creative stasis? Like too many days without exercise, it takes huge effort to pick up the needles, or fabric and scissors, or paper and pen, or even that memoir manuscript, and just ‘do.’ These drawings are maps to my interior and I study them for clues, markers of my abilities, and feel something stirring ever so quietly.