“The Gods, the infinite ones, give everything to the ones they love, all joys, all sorrows, EVERYTHING to us, their beloved ones.” Goethe

This quote from Goethe, along with the William Blake painting  “God creating the universe” was the inspiration for this journal page. It remained in this unfinished state (above) for many weeks. My original intention was to have many streams of bright colours coming down from God’s hand representing all the many life experiences, good and bad. Since the quote was “the Gods” plural, I decided to put some Greek and Roman gods in on the act, which was all going well until they all started bickering amongst themselves , as you can see below: (warning, swearing is involved) You’ll probably need to click on it to make it big enough to read anyway.

At this stage I realised that a bunch of really bright colours across the bottom was going to unbalance the whole colour composition so I just didn’t finish it for ages. Finally I had the idea to take some of the colours from the William Blake painting, and also from the purplish clouds, and use those colours for the coloured streams, and this is how it turned out:

I rather like the way it turned out now and I’m glad I finished it. For the border I think I just googled “Greek borders” and printed one out several times.

I’m not sure whether I find this quote comforting or not. I know the first time I heard it I was struck by it. I suppose in a way I celebrate the rich tapestry of life, I appreciate the many different experiences we are given, I understand that difficult experiences help us to grow, and naturally, at the same time I  wish for only good things to come my way!