Abstract from ice (modified and updated)

Once upon a time we had a rabbit. The rabbit died over a year ago just on New Year’s Eve. We took the rabbit tray outside, it was in our garden collecting rain water and algae. It was a big cage, capacious. When the big freeze came over the last week all that water with algae froze creating interesting patterns and compositions. I chopped the ice with an old bread tin. It was also filled with heavy ice. Our son lifted it off the tray. He placed it next to his knee to show how tall and thick it was, impressive in size. I photographed the blocks of ice while they were still floating among the icy water and when son was holding the ice.

The algae surrounded them. I then post-processed the photos in Lightroom. My favourite abstract composition is below.

I wonder what you think of it all?

Let me know.

And yesterday while walking, I met this little being. I think its eye is in the abstract.

Writing and photography: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, 2025, Home Studio, Derby, UK. Outdoor photo taken in Willington, South Derbyshire.

Updated 16.01.2025.

Gratitude for ice

It’s hard to see this. This amount of flooding and the road closure. It is easy to become overwhelmed. After all, we see Earth in a trauma response. With a compromised immunity system. When we cross Earth’s boundaries, Earth crosses ours. You feel this too? And yet Earth never stops being generous. Giving beyond the easily discernible. It tells us to look harder, better. Beyond the ‘road closure’ sign. There is art to be grateful for.

Two pieces of work abstracted from ice. Mostly created on this road.

Willington, Derbyshire, UK.

Work of Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, 2025.

Oh, by the way, I updated

my photo art portfolio. You can see it here: https://a-credible-dreamer.co.uk/

I have one more post to share soon. Expect a new arrival on Sunday.

I hope you are really taking care of yourself. Make use of the refreshing icy weather if you’re based in this hemisphere. And do what makes you happier and stronger. Speak soon. x

Creative individuals

“Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. Creative individuals don’t have to be dragged out of bed; they are eager to start the day. This is not because they are cheerful, enthusiastic types. Nor do they necessarily have something exciting to do. But they believe that there is something meaningful to accomplish each day, and they can’t wait to get started on it. Most of us don’t feel our actions are that meaningful. Yet everyone can discover at least one thing every day that is worth waking up for. It could be meeting a certain person, shopping for a special item, potting a plant, cleaning the office desk, writing a letter, trying on a new dress. It is easier if each night before falling asleep, you review the next day and choose a particular task that, compared to the rest of the day, should be relatively interesting and exciting. Then next morning, open your eyes and visualize the chosen event—play it out briefly in your mind, like an inner videotape, until you can hardly wait to get dressed and get going. It does not matter if at first the goals are trivial and not that interesting. The important thing is to take the easy first steps until you master the habit, and then slowly work up to more complex goals. Eventually most of the day should consist of tasks you look forward to, until you feel that getting up in the morning is a privilege, not a chore.”

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Walk with me

There was a time in my life that nothing could have made me jump out of bed more than the promise of reading a blog that one wonderful woman was writing on the other side of the globe. I have never read or seen anything that would create such a strong reaction in me and was really never as compelled by someone’s writing as much as I was then. The words were cutting right through to the heart and the mind, giving me the education that I needed and reaching me where I was in my life at the time. At times I gasped in awe, and totally puzzled, I stammered in disbelief: How… how on Earth does she know how to meet me there? How on Earth does she know that I need to read what I am reading to transform? At times I was so spooked that I honestly looked around my own room in search of surveillance cameras feeling oddly exposed but at the same time totally understood in someone else’s writing. Have you ever experienced anything similar? Have you ever felt like that? Strangely capable of seeing yourself in other people’s experiences?

When Autumn ends, when the golden colours disappear and the grey and dullness start to seep in, I crave for inspiration, but what is truer is that I crave to be assured that the beauty will return, that the sun will shine strong again – and this is perhaps what inspiration does to our internal landscapes – it’s the sun that lights up our grey surroundings. It’s the sun that lights up the whole of you and it may come from outside but I have now learnt that it may come from within too. It’s almost a decision, or a pact with oneself, that even if there is nothing that inspires me now I will walk in its way… I will walk where the light is.

The blog that inspired me so much was Inked in Colour. Go and visit the site.

Brave magic

No one knows it better than children that darkness can be beautiful and exciting. That shadows can have their charm. That solitude can bring up our creative spirits and make them hear voices that naturally disappear during our daily ramble of routines. No one knows it better than children that the unknown is always a promise of discovery, that the scary can easily be turned into the unusual or the magical.

Sometimes we need a bit of help to tread into the unknown and to become childen whose curiosity is stronger than fear, we need to be helped with going through the darkness of self-discovery. During our darkest moments we rarely resemble children who are interested in observing or making the magic happen. During our darkest moments we are utterly confused, stuck in the difficulty. And this is when we reach for somebody or something and this is usually the time when many of us start to pray again – or to pray for the very first time ever. The prayer works, mostly when we understand that

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” Soren Kierkegaard

It’s when we start to smile at darkness that the magic begins. It’s when we take the responsibility for making the magic happen, that it does.

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