Tarot cards have always intrigued me. I made my own personal tarot deck a couple years ago, for my own use. And as I researched tarot, I learned about oracle cards. I realized I had used them before, when I was a child and just hadn't known what they were. My aunt lived with my grandmother when I was growing up, so every visit to my grandmother's house was accompanied by a trip upstairs to her room, filled with various crystals, herbs, and cats. She would have my sister and I choose angel cards and would read them to us. Then at the end of our visit we got to take home a tiny little angel card with one word on it. It always seemed so magical. I wanted to return to that childhood magic.
As I reached out into the world of cartomancy, I realized I met it as an adult now and I wanted to go deeper. Researching deck after deck, I found many that I will love forever. But I didn't find what I was looking for. And I realized I had to make it.
However, I was in the doldrums in my artistic journey. I hadn't even so much as doodled in over a year. As a teenager I was a cacophony of different art forms. In college I focused in on painting and drawing. I was always full of inspiration and ideas. But I never loved my own art. It was never good enough. So my desire petered out. I focused on writing and tried to let art go.
It wasn't until oracle cards entered my life that I had the courage to go back into my collection of old art. As I leafed through sketches and figure drawings, I came upon a series I had done of four black and white line art illustrations a couples years prior. And they sang to me. I felt instantly transported back to the feeling of letting something oour out of your soul and onto paper. I had the itch again.
I started with a series of portrait from photographs, but something was calling me back to those old line art drawings, small ones on sheets of cardstock cut in half. And then I made the connection. These drawings were the ones that I truly felt. They were the ones that would be the start of my oracle deck.
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