It’s here, at last! My copy of Alena Hennessy’s new book Intuitive Painting Workshop has made its way to Germany into my mailbox.
And it is a special book, for sure. This weekend it has been almost exactly two years that “by coincidence” I stumbled upon a video lesson for Alena Hennessy’s painting course A Year of Painting and embarked on this painting adventure, picking up my old brushes and dried-out paints again after a couple of years of hibernation and totally painted my heart out for a year. Alena is a very gifted and gentle teacher and soul and I happily looked forward to every new painting lesson. And the very supportive e-course community soon became one of my favourite places to hang out online.
Apparently, Alena’s publishers quite liked what we were doing in the course. So in November 2014 Alena started working on her third book, based on this course, and the painters in her course were invited to send in work with the chance of being published. I was on vacation on Gran Canaria at this time, but the person I am, who likes to “work” on vacation (always feels like play, anyway), I had my laptop with me with all my saved art files and could send them my selection.
Publishing a book takes time and my (creative) life went on with more paintings and patterns and the idea of the book was only a vague concept in my mind – until the book came out in early December 2015 in the States and I saw first glimpses of it on other student’s blogs and facebook accounts.
So now I am very honoured to have four of my paintings published in this beautiful book along with the work of my awesome co-artists in the course and I couldn’t say it better then the amazing Susan Ciappara (aka Suki Kapinao) wrote in her amazon review: “An enchanting tome filled with the magic of creativity, color and inspiration and loving support that I experienced being in the authors online painting courses over the last few years. It really captures the sense of community and cross inspiration that occurred in this tight knit group of emerging artists. We found our voices in this wonderful environment facilitated by Alena – and to see it all together is extraordinary and inspires me to keep going with all that I learned. I have watched all these women blossom and grow and sparkle and shine and how nice to now have this book to commemorate it all. Kudos, Alena! – and all my A Year of Painting sisters!”
And a little quiz at the end – which one of these paintings could be mine? If you know me a bit and my favourite colour – easy!