Issue #25 Painting & Prose: My Creative Process

Seeing Anew

Is it really 2026?! I’ve taken a long hiatus away from posting, longer than I realized. Truthfully, I’ve been very busy, dividing my time between my old faithful love—painting; and a new love— writing. I have two long-term projects going on, one in each medium. In painting, I’ve been allowing myself the time and space to create a body of work before trying to show or sell it. These are my landscape paintings, a new series that will probably take me another year to complete. In my writing, I paused the poetry and have been working hard on a memoir. The memoir is a project I’ve been planning to do for years— and I’m glad that I’m finally doing it, but boy, it is hard work! I’ve joined a writing group that meets weekly, which has been a wonderful, safe place to expose my work. I so appreciate this writing community, and I'm learning a lot from the other writers!

The landscapes, as I wrote about in my last post, are inspired by my most recent commission for a dear friend. His request was I paint him a landscape, which I was unsure I wanted to try, not having painted a landscape in over 30 years. I accepted the challenge, but was blocked for quite a while. Eventually, I worked through it (see my blog post Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone) and created the first of the series that I’m really enjoying. They all look at a landscape through a frame— a portal— and that frame is in turn surrounded by a field of pattern and horses. For me, there is something very different in seeing the landscape this way; the juxtapositions of the pattern, horses and frame elements change my perception of the landscape. Looking at the landscape through the frame/portal makes it feel more magical, and a little surreal. It leaves me daydreaming about how subjective significance is, and how we designate experiences, people and pets to be important by placing them within frames. I believe we frame something to see it anew, to transform it by looking at it in a new way.

Writing my memoir is very much the same process. By putting my memories and emotions of the past into words in the present, I’m able to understand my life in a new way. I find I am seeing it through a very different lens now, the lens that memoir writing demands. This lens is akin to the framing device I use in my landscape paintings; the framing is my state of mind as I regard the experience I’m writing about. For example, I can look at the traumatic event of losing my husband as a tragedy (and of course I do), but I can also frame it as an experience that helped me learn an important lesson about resilience. But to write a memoir is to hold a magnifying glass to one’s life story; it's both painful and rewarding. I think it’s a great exercise for anyone who likes to write, regardless of whether you want to publish it. I do want to publish mine, but when that happens (said with naive optimism!) it will not be the best part of the project.

I’m not ready to post excerpts from the memoir, but I’m happy to share one of the diagrams that I’ve been working on, as I try and pin down some kind of structure. The structure depicted above is a version of Chris Vogler's narrative structure (Vogler is an author, educator and screenwriting consultant). He adapted his framework from Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. Although I may not stick with this format, it helps me to see the visual shape of the story!

Also in 2025, I finally took a trip to Peru to visit my son, and a little side trip to Costa Rica afterwards. Seeing my son in Peru is something I’ve wanted to do for years, but was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle it physically, due to my chronic illness. In 2025 had a blessed six-month reprieve from flareups, from about May til October. I wasn't free of symptoms, but I felt a lot better than I have in years. So before I could change my mind, I booked my flights in November and took my daughter along with me! It was a fantastic trip, especially the Peru leg. The climate in the sleepy, impoverished surf-town where my son lives (up near Ecuador) was dry and warm, and I felt very well there. It’s hard to put into words how happy it made me to see him fully integrated into Peruvian culture, and to see the house he painstakingly built with his own two hands.

What was also remarkable about the whole trip was how present I felt, and how much that positively affected my mood and nervous system. I felt so relaxed, inspired, and full of wonder! Every morning I woke up with curiosity about the culture, landscape, people and wildlife around me. Again, I think of the metaphor of seeing anew: every day was filled with looking, listening, tasting, smelling, and feeling… an abundance of new information for my senses!

In Peru we walked on the beaches, admiring interesting rock formations, sea life, birds, and the arid, ochre earth that stretched as far as the eye could see. In Lima we swam with a barking mob of sea lions in the frigid ocean; in Costa Rica we snorkeled with sea turtles, barracuda and beautiful fish; rode horses on the beach and hiked through the rainforest to see toucans, monkeys and crocodiles. Every day of the trip felt like such an exciting new adventure!

Unfortunately, I got exposed to some mold in the hotel in Costa Rica and ended up getting sick before coming home, but that didn’t change how I felt about the trip. It was still a magical experience, a glimpse into totally different ways of living. And as traveling often does, it afforded me a new perspective on my own life. It allowed me to see what I take for granted everyday (hot showers, for starters!) and to see what I'm missing (sunlight, and being outdoors all day). One important piece of information I gained is how much my environment affects my health: my body does very well in a warm, dry climate where the days are longer!

It's not easy to see our lives with fresh eyes, or to see the places we go, and the people we see everyday with new perspective. But I think it's worth trying! When I paint, I sometimes stand with my back to the painting, and hold up a mirror to look at the work, just to see the painting differently. It really helps me to see what's not working. When I'm feeling stuck in my life, even just getting away on a day trip can be so envigorating. For me, sometimes seeing something with fresh eyes is just a matter of being more present. It's easiest for me to do this in nature, because there are always small (or sometimes big) changes to notice from day to day. After all, we are born with these five senses (and maybe a sixth ;) so why not make use of them? Engaging all of them has helped me to "see" things anew.

Wishing you a wonderful start to the new year.

With love,  

​www.liselemeland.com​