Mary Ambrose

After Mary called me tonight, I decided to post this picture I took of one of her altered books. I don’t know whether or not I could analyze why these two pages appeal to me so much, but everything just works for me here…the colors, the composition, the combination of lights and darks, and of course, the images.
The interesting thing about Mary is that while everything she does looks fresh and spontaneous, there’s actually a lot of planning behind it. In fact, she says that planning gives her the freedom and confidence to let her art take her wherever it wants to go.
I learned about Mary’s “front end loading” when I interviewed her for the May/June 2006 issue of RubberStampMadness. For some reason, I’d always thought of her as a force of nature above and beyond any kind of creative strategy. But since then I’ve realized I believe this to be true of the creative process in general – and I think it’s held me back.
While fantasizing about what I’d like to do is pleasurable (in the short run), it’s not actually planning or preparation. The real satisfaction comes from seeing an idea become tangible.