Little Boat Tree and BIG beginnings

With Lilly and I in overdrive with BIG business plans and strategic futures, I come back to thinking about the beginning of all this. Until now, we have simply been running, flying, driving. But with some seriously BIG concrete currently taking shape, and our gorgeous new blog banner (thanks to the brilliant Maree Oaten), I stop for a second to shake my head (again) at how it all went 'go'.

She Loved Her Like an Ocean, Gentle and Wild,  Lilly Blue

 A prologue to BIG Beginnings:

After the birth of my two marvellously mad boys

I could not let go of the call to have another baby.

I even 'heard' footsteps of a third child, a girl child.

After miscarriage and marriage meltdown over the thought of 'three', my very much wanted daughter eventually joined us in December 2009. 

When she finally arrived, 

I wanted to give her something. 

A marker of her birth.

A gift for a  longed for daughter from her ecstatic mother.

My maternal grandmother (who died when my mother was only two) was an artist, my mother a singer, and I now a dancer. 

I couldn't imagine not continuing the maternal line and the particular imagining that had run through blood for so long (she will no doubt become a statistician!).

Unpacking the landing of gentle and wild

So when I found Lilly's work online on her blog and at Art 2 Muse,  I knew I had found my gift. With 3 kids now, the particular work I fell in love with was too expensive for me so I wrote to ask if I could buy an unframed print or negotiate payment options for the framed version. As an old friend from a particularly memorable and rich period of my Island life (Tasmania circa 1998), Lilly met me generously and wholeheartedly. A deal was made and the work flew to me, and to Nadia Rose. And fittingly, it was this unexpected prologue of child and art that inspired my initial BIG invitation to Lilly (and her YES).
 
Lilly and her Little Boat Tree are on a journey of oceanic proportions. We have had much discussion about how our other 'worlds' fit with and within BIG and we will reveal more of that as we know it ourselves. After a hiatus on the blog because of BIG, Lilly is now back there as well as here, and if you haven't found her already I can promise you will a little bit fall in love with her and her divine blog Little Boat Tree. Enjoy!