friends – Jackie Little Miller Fine Art

Three Foot Rule!

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders,

Let me walk upon the waters,

Where ever you would call me,

Take me deeper then my feet would ever wander,

that my faith would be made stronger,

In the presence of my savior. (Hillsong United)

My heart has sung this song so many times in the past few years, and my soul meant every word of it. Of course I admit I thought my journeys would be more of the metaphorical type. LOL! This is sort of a ‘Lord send me anywhere but Africa kind of story.” LOL!

So, I left you hanging at the end of January with us putting our house in Oregon up for sale. Our hearts had already made the move to Florida but our heads were still trying to catch up with the game.

This story begins on the third day of showing the house, after the third viewer made us a full price offer and we accepted it. It was so exciting. It was so terrifying. It was wonderful and horrible.

It is so strange how you can feel two seemingly opposite emotions at the same time. But you can! As I started to tell the people I love that we would be moving to Florida for sure I was so surprised by their responses. Our Kids were, of course, so supportive and happy for us. Though they were also very sad as were we. That didn’t really surprise me that much.

Turns out our kids were the easy ones to tell. It was harder to tell my grown grandkids. I figured my Eldest Grandson would be cool with it as he has moved away for work and has a lovely girl friend and is creating his own new life.

My Granddaughter is also grown and off to college and doing a great job of it, and I am so very proud of her! I have a special bond with all of my grandkids, but Em and I have grown even closer over the last few years as she has become a young woman. She loves to come and just hang out with me on stressful weekends when she can get away from school. We laugh together and sometimes cry together. We put puzzles together but our favorite thing is to play a card game called spit. I taught her to play this game years ago when I was at the top of my game, and I’m proud to say she has become the master and has dethroned my record. LOL! When I told her that we were moving, she and I cried together for a very long time.

The whole month of February my husband and I sorted, cleaned, fixed up, packed up, cleared out, laughed and cried. I looked forward to and dreaded every weekend at the same time. On the weekends all the kids and grandkids when they could make it down would come over and spend a couple days helping us with all that needed to be done.

I made a declaration right away that I called the three foot rule. This rule states that if you come within three feet of me you need to stop and give me a big hug. It was great at first, all the hugs were amazing and came with giggles. I was on a mission and excited to get it done. Then at one point I was standing in my bedroom surrounded by all my girls and one of them said out loud ‘Three foot rule” and they all moved in to hug me. I just started the ugly cry right there and then. So of course my eldest Daughter had to get a photo. Photo included along with other three foot rule photos

Ya know sometimes in your life you wonder if you are doing what the Lord wants you to do. You struggle with making decisions and question the sanity of those decisions. I know I do. But this was not one of those times. God showed up and was evident in every step of this process.

Just a few of the ways God showed up :

My husband lost his job/ retired making it possible for us to move, which we never would have decided to do because it wasn’t part of our precious retirement plan.

We both started waking up earlier and earlier for a couple of weeks, not of our own doing, but it just happened. We woke early, worked all day going thru things and going to bed earlier because we were exhausted. So by February our bodies were already on Florida time, before we even moved.
In September of last year we planned a vacation to visit our kids in Florida. We purchased our tickets for February 28th. The tickets were an outrageous price but my husband said to buy them anyway! Which he never does. He is a serious penny pincher. I remember asking him then, “what have you done with my husband!”
Then the sale of our house in Oregon “just happened to” close on February 27th. We flew out the next day. God planned that months in advance for us.
At the beginning of February we needed to book a PODS container to ship our belongings to Florida. At the time we had no idea where we would be moving to. We had looked at a few houses on line but we were planning on moving in with our daughter in law’s parents and then look for a place. We scheduled the PODS container to be dropped off (so we could load our stuff) on the 24th of Feb and pick it up on the 27th. Then it would travel across country and would arrive on the 11th of March. We had scheduled it to be delivered to our son’s house to serve as a storage unit until we found a place.
Then a few weeks later our daughter in law sent us a link to a large house in Lakeland with an in-law suite attached. This was a house we could buy together with them. With Twins on the way they were fast out growing their home. This house was large enough to hold their growing family comfortably and give us our own side of the house. It was beautiful and Lindsay and I decided right away that this was the home for us. It was perfect for us to be close and be able to help out with the new babies and the three older boys. Well we put in a long shot offer and it was accepted over the rest. We closed on that house March 9th and guess what day we moved in? That’s right, the 11th. so on the 9th we changed the Pod’s delivery address to our new address and it showed up before all of our helpers.

This whole move has been filled with things like this. It has been amazing. God is so good! So you would think that I’m on cloud nine all the time. And I am much of the time. I know we are where God wants us. I’m happy to be near my Son’s family and grandkiddos. I love my new home. Yet I miss my Oregon family and friends so very much and my heart aches for them.

I’m a very small town girl who is very uncomfortable with change and now I live in a Big City and Everything in my life is new and different. New state, New house, New neighborhood, new neighbors, New house noises, new vehicle when we can find one we like, new surroundings, New stores, new weather, new church… and hopefully soon new friends! You name it, It’s new.

Since I’ve been here I’ve been warned not to touch any plant unless I know what it is, It might be poisonous. I’ve been warned about alligators, Pythons, fire ants, Some huge spider I forget the name of but we have killed one already, water moccasins, mosquitos, and something they call no-see-ums! But I’m not really worried, I will just never ever leave my house. LOL! Just kidding!

In Oregon all I had to worry about was black widow spiders, rattle snakes, bear and cougars. Oh and BIG FOOT of course. Apparently everything in Florida wants to kill you! Oh Florida has the bears and cougars too! SO I do feel more at home knowing that! LOL!

I guess I am telling you all this to let you know that it’s ok to feel all the feelings. God knew I would miss my Oregon kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, friends, neighbors. And that they would miss me. That is how it should be, because we love each other big! But with every heartache of things I miss, there is joy in the people and things I have here.

I do often still ask myself “Why am I here?” I think it’s still my head trying to figure it all out because my soul always comes right back with “Because the Lord invited you!” It is well with my soul and I do so LOVE MY LIFE!

A Time to be Born

Painting In Progress

This piece is #3 in my Ecclesiastes 3 series wrapping up a very emotional year.

Titled “A Time to be Born”

This year has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. If you are a regular reader you know that I lost my big sister on Christmas day last year. So, even though I had planned to paint more paintings this year then ever before, turns out I have painted three. This season of painting has been filled with passion and raw emotion as I worked out the avalanche of emotions that were, and still are, churning around in my very soul as I allowed them to flow through me onto the canvas.

The first two paintings I have done in this series were working out my grief.Remembering tender moments and reliving old regrets. But #3 was going to be different.

In February, We found out that our son and his wife were expecting another baby. Our home was filled with joy again. This would be our 4th grandchild. Soon, though, that joy turned to worry as we got the news that the baby would have a 25% possibility of having Cystic Fibrosis. Months went by, waiting for news as Dr. visits and check ups were scheduled, We found out the baby was a boy! Helping pick out names, counseling love and hope to our son and his wife as they worried, trying to be strong for them, feeling like a rag that had been rung out once to many times myself. Praise the Lord, the birth went amazingly well, and spirits and hopes were high, but after a few days it was evident that little man Kai was indeed sick with the dreaded disease. The roller coaster ride goes on still.

I decided to go on with my painting series. After all “to everything there is a season”, right? I decided to use my emotions artistically and focus on the positive. So about a month before Kai was born I started this painting. Using a reference photo of his older brother Grey taken by their aunt Naomi, I picked one that had the main focus on the connection of the hands and heart. It would be the companion piece to “The Last Goodbye.” and I wanted the emotional connection of the hands as well as a connection between the two pieces of art.

I started with a sketch up on canvas as I usually do, then quickly blocked in all the elements. In my typical way I adjusted the back ground several times and worked to keep the main focus on the hands not the baby’s face.

View More: http://naomilynnphotography.pass.us/grey-thomas-miller

As I progressed, I felt something was wrong with the composition but couldn’t put my finger on it. So I walked away from it over night and when I had looked at it with fresh eyes I quickly realized that the mother’s thumb on the head was serving as a stop sign. So, It had to go. I fiddled with that hand and moved it several time before getting the thumb where I wanted it being the support for the head.

Also around this point in the painting I switched from Acrylics to oils like I did with “The Last Goodbye” painting to get better blend ability.

The idea in my head was to make the background for the baby the sheets, like in the companion piece. I was also planning on adding just a touch of the green, like in the hospital gown, for the babies diaper cover. But once it was painted in, I felt it was too cold and void of emotion and warmth. So to fix this problem I decided to switch the green to the background and the white sheet to cover the diaper and lower left hand corner of painting. Once this was done I was so pleased. The painting was now warm and full of life.

To me the green represents the LIFE in these two paintings. I “A Time to be Born” there is so much life to look forward to, and in “Last Goodbye” there is just a remnant of life left. I had accomplished telling the story.

Part of my creative process is watching what happens as I paint and deciding where to go from there. As I progressed through this painting I was having difficulty with the hand that supports the baby’s head. Things that work ok in photographs do not always translate well into a painting. you see the ye is naturally drawn to the point in the painting with the greatest contrast. The mother’s pale hand against the dark hair and strong shadows of the baby’s head was creating it’s own focal point. This created a problem for me as the story I wanted to tell was to be told through the emotional connection of the hands. So I had to do a delicate dance of lowering the values of the hand and even graying it out some so that it would feel more like a background element, even though in reality it was the thing in the far most foreground. I needed to be there as part of the story, but I didn’t really need it as a main character.

At the same time I was dulling out the left hand, I was increasing the contrast and intensifying the color of the baby’s hand. I did this by adding glazes of a warm shadow color and adding more warm reds to the tips of the fingers, with reflected red light bouncing off of the mother’s fingers. I also added those same reds to the ear to give baby a nice health glow.

A Time to be Born

11″x 14″ Oil on canvas

#3 of the Ecclesiastes 3 series By Jackie Little Miller

I wonder what painting the Lord will have me work and FEEL my way though next. It has been therapeutic yet, painful. I love that it is taking my art up a level, but a little apprehensive of what might be next. I’m hoping for some laughter and dancing soon. LOL! But I know my God is faithful. I know that His plans for me are for good, His thoughts are of peace for me and not evil, to give me a future and a hope. And I will keep painting though what ever He brings my way next.

Thank you so much for stopping by and checking out my art process! To see more of my paintings check out jackielittlemiller.com

Grief is a Strange Animal

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

It has been Six months since my big sister/ best friend passed away. Six Months of grieving, six months of not being able to breath, six months with very little creativity and art; and Four months since I created my last piece titled A Time to Mourn. Though it may be my best to date. It expresses my grief more then I could ever express it with words.

Grief is such a strange animal. I thought I knew this beast well, because I have met it on many occasions before.

This time somehow, it seams bigger and meaner. It seems to have backed me against a wall separating me from my creative side. It seems that with every attempt to vest this beast I am left feeling as though I have lost my artistic balance and I drop my brushes in defeat, frozen, temporarily paralyzed and unable to move my arms and mind into submission.

But I am not one to give up, I am brave, and bull headed. So I keep charging in and making myself go though the motions. Knowing that deep inside me creativity is alive and well and will eventually surface and be the victor. Each day I am desiring more and more to create again. I want to force myself past this dragon of grief and go to my favorite place to live, in the land of laughter, sunshine and creating things. Because I just want to be happy again.

I have to say though that It is not a scary monster, it’s just big and in my way and becoming very annoying. Like Rex from the movie Toy Story where he says “I’m going for fearsome here, but I just don’t feel it. I think I’m just coming off as annoying.”

I know that this beast called grief is not my enemy, or an enemy to my art. He may even be there, larger than life, to protect me from something that would wound me deeper while my heart heals. I need to let him stand there and do his job. In the end it will cause me to be a better artist, painting with more feeling and emotion.

For without the darkness, one can not truly enjoy the light. Without the tears and pain, one can not truly appreciate the laughter and Joy. Without the experience of devastation one can not truly appreciate the creative process.

Thank you all for being so understanding and supporting me during this painful time for me. May God richly bless you!

A Time To Mourn

FEATURED ART OF THE DAY

Time to Mourn FB

As many of you know, I lost my sister/ best friend recently. It has left me unable and some times unwilling to express my emotions. Which is strange because this is what I do, I put my feelings onto words, whether in poetry, song or in some cute way to make us all laugh at our circumstances and feel better about them. But Now, I’ve got nothing! No words will come out, they will not even form in my mind, and even when they do they refuse to come out of my mouth in any coherent manner.

Being an artist, I turned to painting for my therapy, or processing of my emotions. My original thought was to just do something simple. I can’t concentrate long enough or even care enough to focus on doing a portrait and make sure that it looks like a specific person. I had painted a few dancers and thought I could continue in that series. After asking for help with reference photos from my friends on face book, I was overwhelmed with the out pouring of responses. Several photo were dramatically lighted and drew my attention and so I pulled one of them and started considering the composition.

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Original reference photo from Melodie Lauhan

That night as I was falling asleep I envisioned a dripping background to this piece and that I could do in monotone in sepia colors. So the next morning I started to paint. 20180203_132423

Once the background was painted and dry I traced on my drawing of the dance just like in the photo. Then I started blocking in her form.

But the more I painted the more I felt the sadness of the piece, as if I was painting my pain. So instead of trying to fix it and make it brighter or happier, I decided to embrace the pain, crying with every brush stroke applied to the canvas. Soon I realized that this dancers pose was not expressive enough to show the depths of grief that I was feeling. So I decided to move the arms and make her holding her head.

I moved her hands several times before getting them exactly where I wanted them also changing the tilt of her head. I was even blessed to get my Photographer son Isaiah Miller to photograph my beautiful daughter in law in the hand pose I needed, and under the same lighting conditions as the original reference photo to make it easier for me to paint it correctly.The problem I had now was that I could not repaint the background as I loved the feeling of the drips so I had to hide the painting of the hands on the floor in the hair. Since my daughter in law has such lovely long full hair, this was an easy transition.

Once the detail in the hands and body were complete I felt I needed to clothe her in black to finish the look of one who mourns. Once that was done I felt that I had achieved expressing my inner most emotions. I hope that you can feel what my heart is saying and I hope that it touches you deeply.

Please leave a comment telling me how this piece makes you feel and what it tells you. I would love to hear from you.

First and Final Breaths

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

I’ve been called out in the middle of the night, to race to the bedside of a friend or family member, to help usher in new life many times. With the knowledge that the time was near, I would set out my clothing in a neat pile so that I could hastily put them on and be out the door within minutes of getting the call to action. Unable to fully give into sleep, afraid I might miss the call. Anticipation filled my mind as I lay thinking about how this could be the night. Eventually, the awaited call would come and I would jump out of my bed and rush out the door.

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Hours would pass as my sister and I would bathe troubled brows, put pressure on lower backs, and talk women through each contraction; helping them to relax, easing their pain, whispering words of encouragement and love into the ear, and words of the life that was to soon come. Long painful minutes often stretched into back breaking hours of bending over beds with no thought of our comfort, only thoughts of helping to ease and comfort others.

How many time have I held a hand as life struggled to make its way into this world, to take it’s first breath? 50? 60? It’s a moment that takes your breath away, Unexplainable, sacred, and Holy. A moment celebrated with laughter, tears, and relief. And I was honored to be present for so many.

~~~

As I sat by my sister’s bedside Christmas Eve 2017, I reflected on how much the last days and hours ushering life out was much the same as ushering life in.

For weeks I lay in my bed at night, phone by my side, a pile of clothes ready to be put on at a moments notice. But this time instead of waiting with great excitement and anticipation, there was anxiety, my chest tight with sorrow and worry. Tears wet my pillow, as I would see my sister in my mind, wasting away. I was haunted by the thought of losing her. I needed to be there with her, with all my heart. You see, she had been by my side since I was born. She was there for every major and minor event of my life and my children’s lives. I had to be able to care for her, yet I was afraid that I wouldn’t be called in time to rush to her side.

My sister loved Christmas and last wish was to be home for Christmas Eve (The night of their annual Christmas party. She wanted to be with her family. It was a very subdued and quiet party in the living room that night. We all took turns going into her bedroom where there were several chair by her bedside and soft Christmas music playing. Some came in to say their good byes, others crying, some just sitting in silent vigil.

When the hour was getting late, reluctantly, her grandchildren were taken home and tucked into their beds. Christmas music was turned off and we whispered into Sherry’s ear that she had made it through Christmas with the family. All the kids were home in their beds and that it was Ok for her to go to her new home to her eternal life with Jesus.

I was blessed to be able to stay, with a few other family members, to spend one last night with my sister. To tend to her needs, to make sure she was comfortable. I bathed her brow with my tears, Knowing that her pain would soon be over. Whispered words of encouragement and love into her ear, words of the life that was soon to come with Jesus. I held her hand for long emotionally painful minutes that silently slipped into back breaking hours of bending over her bed with no thought of my own comfort, just wanting, needing to do anything and everything I could to ease the last hours of this precious Woman, that had done so very much for me, and that I loved more then life itself !

How many time have I held a hand as life struggled to make its way out of this world, to take it’s final breath? One! It was a moment that took my breath away, Unexplainable, sacred, and Holy. A moment celebrated with tears, sorrow and yet relief. And I was honored to be present for her birthing into Heaven.

My heart aches now, more then I ever thought possible. I have never hurt this bad or this deeply before. Speechless and sometimes breathless, but never hopeless, and maybe even a little jealous. WHY?

Because: I know My Redeemer lives, and I know that my sister is with Him in heaven today, seeing Him face to face. Oh, How I envy her that. For it is what I long for most in life. I long to see my Jesus and thank him for all that he has done in my life! To thank him for giving me such an amazing sister and family, and allowing me to love others as He has loved me for as long as He has planed for me to do so!

Beautiful things rarely happen in our lives without pain being present. Pain is part of life. I don’t fully understand that, or even like it, to be honest. But I know that without darkness we would not know what light is. With out sickness we do not appreciate health, and without pain we could not truly experience joy. I do not understand God and why he chooses to do what He does. I argue with Him quite often, thinking I know better then He does. I also know that He is big enough to handle my little temper tantrums.

His ways are not my ways. I have learned to trust and respect that, surrendering every aspect of my life to Him! Because I know the plans He has for me, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give me a future and a hope! (Jer 29: 11)