July | 2012 | Commonplace Grace

Maybe the tragedy of the human race was that we had forgotten we were each Divine. -Shirley MacLaine

The inspiration for Divine Things came to me one summer on Martha’s Vineyard. The island is wrapped in a wild, raw beauty. There are images of mermaids everywhere. Lying on the beach, it’s not hard to imagine a secret world beneath the waves.

The mermaid in the illustration is a metaphor for the exquisiteness that so often lives below the surface. It takes an open mind and heart to discern it. But then again, sometimes all it takes is just looking……

I took this picture of my daughter Bridget on Martha’s Vineyard, around the time she posed for the illustration. She is a mermaid of the landlocked variety. For more information on mermaids check out my friend Margot Datz’s A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids

www.sueshanahan.com

In a conversation, my friend Andrea told me how happy she was with the direction her life had been going. She said, “Things are going so good, I don’t want to let go of the glow.”

Don’t let go of the glow. I liked that. It’s important to guard our thoughts against the negativity that can so easily creep in. I’ve learned that whatever I illustrate sticks with me so I promptly rustled up a couple of models (Andrea’s son Adrian being one of them) and got this drawing down on paper. The next week when Adrian’s mom mentioned she was intent on “keeping the glow going,” I thought, “oh no, here we go again.”

What about you? How do you keep the glow going?