“Gil” – click image to enlarge

My personal art journey has been linked with letter writing since day one. My first foray into visual arts over a year and a half ago was with handmade greeting cards. For the past 4 months, I’ve worked almost exclusively with collage, which I combine into my letter writing practice by making postcards and other mailable art.

In 2014 I discovered More Love Letters, a group that promotes writing letters to strangers who need them as a form of therapeutic healing. This well-organized group offers the opportunity to send letters of encouragement and friendship to strangers who have been nominated by friends or family to receive a bundle of love letters from humanity. Nominees are often facing some of the darkest or most challenging days of their lives and are only just hanging onto their faith and hope for the future.

The work of this movement has been heart transforming for me. Writing a letter of friendship and support to someone is a practice of kindness and other-centerdness that is healing for both sender and receiver. Writing and receiving letters is a therapeutic way to create the spiritual connection that is a basic need of every being. When this occurs between strangers, the healing and positive energy of giving, receiving and connecting are radiated across time and space. To be in the midst of troubling times and know that someone who will never meet you is thinking specifically of you and meditating on your circumstances can alter lives and hearts. Participating in the More Love Letters campaign to leak love into the farthest corners of creation is a unique and interesting way to evoke the kind of transformation our world is starving for.

” Strangers writing letters to other strangers, not because they’re ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee but because they have found one another by way of letter writing. ”  – Hannah Brencher, More Love Letters.com

My participation with this group has also begun to inspire my art. Recently I was supremely touched by the story of a man living in my home state who lost his wife of 48 years to a terminal illness. I immediately felt compelled to make something colorful and encouraging for him to see during what is a dark time of loss. I turned out the postcard pictured above and sent it along with all my love and good wishes for healing and hope. The stunning multicolored background is courtesy of a multi media artist named Carolyn Saxby who I am endlessly inspired by. I embellished with hand cut paper flowers, decorative tape, gel inks and an inspiring quotation.

I posted a detail of the postcard on my Instagram account with the #moreloveletters hashtag. Just afterward, I received a message from the daughter of the card’s recipient advising that it was one of her favorite cards that her Dad received in his love letter bundle and that she was very touched by it following the loss of her mother. It was so lovely to hear from her and it helped me to further realize the healing powers of art, friendship and kindness.

If you want to know more about More Love Letters or how to participate, please visit their website.

Read my love letters to humanity written through my participation in the More Love Letters movement.