What's in a name?

'Heading Towards the Light' (copyright Lara Geach)

Thought it was time to put in another photo of one of my paintings. It was painted quite a while ago, it was me trying to describe walking away from an old life to a new one a bit earlier in my journey of self-discovery. The book under the woman's arm is the book of her life. I like it because it's positive and I'm quite pleased how the light feathers out around her head like a halo! It was all accidental, I didn't have a small enough brush to paint right up to the edges of her hair - I'd painted a yellow undercoat on the whole canvas - but liked the effect so much I left it. It's all part of the creativity evolving moment by moment as I talked about a couple of posts ago.

I've also been musing about names today. I'm glad to say I love my name, (thank you mum and dad!) and am lucky enough to have two variations of it. Lara is the name I use everyday, but my 'real' name is Larissa, and only my gran used to call me that, so it's kind of special. However, I've been thinking recently that I would quite like to use Larissa as my artist name because it's just so lovely and I feel I should use it after almost 40 years! Part of me, however, thinks that is being a bit precious, so I'm going to ruminate on it further! I have created an on-line store on Etsy called Larissa Designs, and my mum liked it, which is always good! Don't go and look for wonderful art to buy though, because it's just a store with no merchandise at present! I will make a big announcement when there is something to sell!

OK, I have ruminated further, and think that it is my name, I love it and why shouldn't I use it! Will have to practise a bit though, as LMG is a lot easier to paint than Larissa, but what a nice problem to have!