Strength of the Elder

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Deborah

Wow, what a week in BIG…Morning pages every day AND contour drawings of ourselves. This touches me deeply. I have to record myself as the elder woman that I am, all those wrinkles shaping my skin over my bones. I have to look in the mirror – deeply – and see what is there. I’m resistant at first, but then I get misty eyed when I realize I see my father’s eyes in my own. Shocked a bit by recognition and then touched by ancestry.

I chose to do the blind exercise first. Meaning that we looked in the mirror and NOT at the paper as we traced the shapes of our faces. I tried it with a brush loaded with paint but found I couldn’t keep the brush filled with pigment long enough. I felt like I was cheating because I looked at the paper for where to begin the next loaded brush stroke. I decided to use a marker and try it again. I liked that one so much, I decided not to color it in but draw another one to paint.

Here are the first three.

 

Then came the real challenge. Drawing myself by looking in the mirror AND at the paper. Trying to make it look like me in other words by seeing and drawing the actual  relationships between cheek and jowl, nose and glasses. Oh god I wish I were young, I wish I were beautiful, I wish I were anything but what I am – until suddenly I love what I’m seeing, the strength, the wisdom, the sparkle, even the age spots…

This is nothing short of a blessing.

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Eye Contact

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Deborah

This week in BIG, we’re beginning each day by drawing in our journals. Kind of like Julia Cameron’s morning pages.

I realize I’ve only done it for two days, but so far, I love starting the day with drawing while I’m sitting in bed with my coffee and toast. Well actually, I read first while drinking my coffee and eating my toast. Then I draw. Somehow, drawing entices me in a way that journal writing every morning does not. This could easily become a non-verbal habit!

I think I’d become really balanced don’t you?

Monday found me sprawling with spirals then coloring in around them. Mindlessly, just letting the pencils choose themselves and marveling at the rhythm of the ins/outs and pondering why occasionally the out never led to an in and the almost enclosed space could go on forever. In some cases, rather than force the issue, I left it white and kind of liked that unfinished look of potential.

Last night, my spirit group met. I call the practice Ecstatic Wisdom Postures ( my links button hasn’t been working for awhile. You can learn about Postures right here on this blog by clicking on the Ecstatic “page”) and it’s based on our ancient ancestors’ art work – artifacts found in sacred sites around the globe. I had a profound experience of seeing the world through a whale’s eyes, then through a chained dancing bear from long ago, then through a bull’s in combat with the toreador, ( Have you seen that amazing image on YouTube? …the toreador humbled by the bull’s innocence and confusion reflected in his eyes. ). Rapidly I saw through the eyes of many other innocent creatures who have suffered at human hands, including innocent humans. I almost succumbed to anguish so huge I would have made a mess of the rest of the evening.

I realized during the ecstatic trance that eyes have been a theme for me in my writing and my art work for much of my life and it’s high time I do something more focused on the importance of eye contact.

So this morning, in my morning pages, I had to do a human eye and from that other eyes came forth all linked by that meandering spiraling line. This feels potent to me and I see how inadvertently there is a small eye in yesterday’s image and of course a spiral in today’s…no accident I’m sure though I didn’t plan that interconnection.

May you see with new eyes today, as I am, too.

 

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Unless. . .

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Deborah

I went to see The Lorax yesterday afternoon with my daughter and two granddaughters. I cried. The trees the trees the trees. The message amplified my own urgency to speak for the trees and everything else on this planet.

Unless…I loved how the filmmakers – Dr. Seuss – played with that word UNLESS. Unless people decide to change, unless we wake up; unless we each fall in love with life; unless we decide to change priorities, unless unless unless. Unless reminds me of positive possibilities. Unless I paint tonight, my world is doomed. ha ha So something about that film, the book about whales I’ve been reading this week which also touches on the plight of salmon, both wild and farmed, ( Alexandra Morton’s  Listening to Whales http://www.raincoastresearch.org/home.htm )
something about my last painting, conspired to make me remember another memory related to trees.

Somehow it’s connected to choosing our paths and that lightning bolt of white that so intrigues me in the painting featured in my last post. The memory is of being stranded with a woman friend after dark in the wilderness with no flashlights or candles on a black and stormy November evening. It’s a good story but too long to share here. What got me home was following the sky above my head. Seriously, it was literally so dark in the thick pine forest that I couldn’t see my feet nor the trail – that dark, really that dark. A “lightning bolt” of happenstance made me look up. I realized that the trail we were following could be seen as a ribbon of slightly paler dark strung against the darker dark of the forest. Although I can see that skypath as a pale imitation of a lightning bolt, too.

There were no stars. But to capture the feeling of being supported by invisible spirits and the sleeping trees themselves, I had to spatter. I love the effect. . The painting really does bring my memory alive of the magic and trust I experienced walking with my eyes turned upward rather than down.

And reminds me that every lightning bolt is an opportunity for UNLESS.  It only takes a stroke of imagination, recognition, compassion to change everything.

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Earth Calls

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Deborah

Oh my gosh I am overflowing with emotion. I went for it. I’ve been sobbing because I went for it. My black dog, Taka, who so patiently listened to me singing Freedom a week ago, this time lay near me during the whole painting process. I worked on the floor. And when I was done and realized the enormity of my anguish for our earth, I burst into tears, and Taka was right there. I rolled over to be near him and he comforted me with pats and kisses and I graced him with my painty hands. He now sports a mixture of yellows, greens and whites on his sweet little head.

So here’s what happened. My curiosity took me INTO the tree I was hugging in the last painting. I wanted to know more about how the tree responds to being recognized by a human, experiencing my love. I knew I wanted to paint bigger so I hooked two pieces of paper together to make a 36 inch square approx. and decided I needed to kneel on the floor. I had the sense I was going to get physical in this one.

I started out thinking I was going to paint my ear, up close and personal, even googled some images of human ears so I knew what they looked like. Then I changed my mind.

I started laying in the trunk again with a broad brush, but the brush didn’t hold enough paint for my pleasure, so I actually drizzled paint right from the bottles onto the paper. I’m using poster paints – I love their silky texture. I stroked them with abandon to make the trunk and then felt moved to streak texture across them. Early on I used a brush. Later my fingernails, replicating the wind from the earlier image. Then to represent my human self, I needed to do hand prints. I did hand prints in two colors all over the left side of the painting and took some time to highlight their interesting shapes by painting blue all around them. Blue represented my dream that humans will awaken in time for us all to thrive on this wee globe.

But then, but then the painting asked for more hands, all the clambering hands of humanity, 7 billion of us soon to live here I learned a few days ago. Hands climbing all over that one poor willow, whose heart still beats strong, eager for humans to return to reverence for life. I started with white right hands and black left hands overlaying the first ones, but then the demand came, more, more, more hands of all the people who rape and pillage and destroy, who don’t realize they live on a sentient being whose stories might illuminate our own. I added yellow hands…then to bring in hope for the greening of our souls, I added green hands, and then I heard the statement. It’s not that easy. The forces of darkness need to be recognized in order to strengthen my resolve to contribute. So I squirted lots of black paint along the left side and then used my hands to push it in tracks obliterating the lovely blue and white patterns I had made earlier. If I hadn’t been in such a flow, I would have gotten my camera out because it would have been fun to see all the rapid changes to this painting.

The white slash to the left came by “accident”…I think I may need to follow it next!

 

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Communion

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Deborah

Oh my, I am so happy. I painted the magic and I did learn something new. I knew I would if I painted this memory and it may not seem like much to you, but to me, it hones my soul in satisfying ways.

So here’s what happened to me oh those many years ago. The storm blows in. Lightning cracks, thunder growls, just like in a fairytale! The tree begins swaying like a wild thing about to start rambling around the neighborhood, sort of like those walking trees in Lord of the Rings. I grab on tighter absolutely sure I need to ride this, need to stay where I am no matter what. I feel the energy of something building. Another gust rocks the tree and to stay in it, I grab reach around it harder and hug myself tight into the trunk with my left ear pressing against it. I rear back. The tree is talking in my ear – loudly muttering. I’m shocked and frightened, but the wind forces me to press my head against the tree again. She is talking, no question about it, and I feel as if I understand her completely. I hear every creak, groan and shimmy in her gut and it astounds me. She is alive like I am. I know her to be a friend.

That knowing of her aliveness is what I had to paint. What is new is this. I laid in the trunk first so I would have a place to put me. I painted one side dark and one side light as I am wont to do since I’m always thinking about lights and darks. Without thinking about why I chose one side or the other to be light or dark, I just did it and because I always paint colorfully, the dark is laden with blues and purples along with blacks and the light is laden with orange and red and yellow and white and even a little magenta. As I began to paint my head – which really looks more like me as an adult than a kid – I suddenly realized why the trunk is light next to where my ear is to be pressed.

The tree is glowing with the aliveness imparted by our new kinship.

She is inspired by me as much as I am inspired by her
and
that folks
is really how the world is.

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Willow in the Storm

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Deborah

I am so full of this BIG Fearless  painting process. ( I can’t seem to make the link key work today so here’s the link: http://www.dirtyfootprints-studio.com.)

Moving my painting into manifestation thrills me. What I mean by that is  ” I love working BIG! ” And what I mean by that is I’m thrilled with large paper, poster paint, clunky brushes and the absolute freedom to “move” my painting into being. Not fine motor skills but the grosser ones. My whole arm slashing across the page to re-experience my memory of climbing a willow tree as a summer thunderstorm came on.

Yesterday, I began this painting to portray my memory as a ten year old of climbing the willow in my back yard to escape from my parents’ arguing. Thunder rumbled but I didn’t care. I had to get high into the arms of my beloved tree. I knew it was dangerous to be IN a tree, let alone near a tree, when it was lightning. But I didn’t care. I also felt safer there than in the house.

I remember the feeling of dashing out of the house and scrambling up the trunk, I don’t know how. I slash in the ground of the painting. The back door takes a moment to slam shut and that’s why there is a slash of yellow reaching toward the tree. The actual act of painting is ferocious because that’s how I remember feeling…a huge desire to protect myself and get away from the chaos inside. I paint the trunk and some branches for where my feet would go to climb up. I know there should be a fence beyond the tree with bushes against it and a house behind it, but I focus simply on scrumbling in the angry sky and ground. I don’t care that a lot of the preliminary branches are obscured by the sky.

I quickly paint me clinging to the trunk, then begin the process of the willow branches. I love love love all the stroking, arcing and slashing and feeling those limber branches coming alive through my hand and brush. I feel cocooned again by that tree 60 years later!

I want the tree to glow because she’s magic in my memory. So I think the painting is done as you see it here:

But wait, I return to study it several times before I go out for the evening and realize it’s not finished. I want to darken the tree and bring on more of the storm. So this first painting becomes a two step process. Today I begin my waking hours by returning to it and I’m thrilled with the darkening, the intensifying of the storm:

Stay tuned for the next installment in a day or two. I still need to paint the “magic” of climbing the willow in a storm.

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Painting Like a Kid Again

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Deborah

Oh my goodness – I am so happy. This morning I experienced painting like a kid, our last exercise in Week #1 of BIG, even though I knew I was an adult with skills and experience.

Forever, I’ve wanted to paint cherry trees blossoming and never dared do it…thinking I’d never be able to capture how looking through those trees makes me feel. In a nearby school yard, there is a blossoming cherry tree even though large flakes of snow are drifting down today. Yesterday I passed it while walking my dogs and inwardly cooed over its beauty.

Today when I asked my soul what to paint as a kid, cherry blossoms surfaced immediately. I kept chanting things like: Keep it simple. How does it feel, how do I paint the look of my feelings, how do those kazillion-pink-and-white-gossamer-piled-on-top-of-each-other blossoms make me feel???? Do what it takes to bring out the feeling.

Attitude is everything. I never doubted myself. What a joy!

I think there may be a series coming from this when BIG is over.

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Breaking Through

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Deborah

Oh my it’s been a good day of creating. Got some writing accomplished – not including this post – and have been painting up a storm. I took Connie Hozvicka’s advice and redid the exercise that got me whining about plaid. My first attempt at the exercise seemed boring and dull, not fluid, which was the intent. My resistance revealed the need to do the exercise again, push my limits and adopt beginners’ mind. The second time around got me reveling in joyous flow, splash, dash and pounce.

I changed everything about my approach. Instead of standing, I lay the painting board on the floor, changed the lighting, knelt on my knees, stretched, rather than circumnavigating, in order to paint the far off corners. This is a BIG painting remember. I felt like I was doing the yoga pose downward dog a few times there, which felt good and accomplished two things at once!

I felt the urge to stand up and fling color and so I did. I found my big plastic sheet and spread it out and went to town hurling away using both hands to switch it up and keep both sides of me involved. Mostly orange and black at the bottom of the painting.

And the coolest thing is that I still have weaving lines but this time they happened without me noticing until the very end of the process. They arose organically in other words. And when I realized I’d woven threads again, I didn’t care if they weren’t accurately warping and woofing.

I found myself humming as I worked and even noticed I was sticking out my tongue the way kids do when concentrating on a task.

AND when I finished and looked at what I’d done, I felt real freedom which reminded me of a short chant whose words are:

Freedom, all I want is freedom.
Freedom comes from not hanging on, you gotta let go, let go.

I sang it for a few minutes to my black dog, who gazed deeply into my eyes – with perplexity.

I call the painting, Inner Flame.

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Seeing PLAID

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Deborah

I’m energized by my online art class called BIG with Connie Hozvicka. But this afternoon I thought I might tear out my hair as I tried to complete one of her assignments.

If I’d known how hard it is to weave lines I would never have attempted to paint plaid but that’s exactly what I did. Silly me. I had thought to skip this exercise. I’ve taught the same kind of thing often enough myself in my beginning watercolor classes that I thought it would be boring. But then wanting to be a good girl and follow instructions AND remembering how plaids had me jazzed yesterday, I thought what the heck, give undulating stripes a whirl, in a circle of course because I’m partial to spirals.

I had fun getting it started. But that was yesterday. When I looked at it this morning,  nothing was weaving correctly. Look at that mess!

So I reworked the weave and did improve it. BUT I realized that if I go under and over following the horizontal lines, it all works. Gloryoski for that. But then I make the mistake of looking at the vertical lines and they do NOT go over and under in a rhythmic pattern at all. I’m aware of how every line passing under relates to every other line passing over, and then under again and I simply can’t keep track of all those relationships. I know it must have something to do with even and odd numbers, warp and woof, sacred geometry, calculators, slide rules, the abacus and perhaps a fine tooth comb…or something.

Eeeeeegad,  plaids have me feeling crazed. Tormented with inability to sort it out. So tormented, I almost chucked it, but then I thought, “What fun would that be?”

I hunkered down and just kept letting the brush do its doodling thing. I’m not in love with the final image but it’s been a colorful teacher. It made me realize what an awesome woven thing is this interconnected web of life. If I have trouble weaving on a flat piece of paper, I’m dumbfounded by the miracle of my being here at all.

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Enchanted by Painting

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Deborah

The RED thread in my life is indeed red, full of engagement and passion, empowering my “AM-ness” in most delightful ways. The online class BIG enthralls me. Connie is my kind of teacher – believes in us, challenges us and then steps out of the way for our unique unfolding – AND she’s doing it online. What an amazing world we live in. I am so jacked to begin teaching online too…when I realize not just facts can be taught online but transformative, juicy processes, too.

So this first week of our process is about easing into using the materials. I can’t wait to start the first exercise yesterday and get up early to do it. Actually, I don’t sleep much with daylight savings time and excitement, so I kind of roll out of bed to a dark rainy timeless day and skidaddle over to my BIG paper already taped to a plywood board and leaning up against the piano. My art studio for BIG is a corner of my bedroom …

I choose four colors. Well, I ask my hands to choose four colors from my stash of poster paints left over from my teaching days in the yurt in Montana. I choose orange and turquoise instantly, then black, then yellow. Later white gets into the act. My first marks are orange zig-zags, but they soon are covered over with large vertical arcs. Then smaller ones, almost a spiral, take place in the upper left. Then horizontal bars along the bottom. I realize – boom – there’s a landscape. I did not intend that. I don’t want to see sea and sky but heck, there it is.

I watch my thoughts zig and zag between knowing it’s a landscape and wanting it to be just flow. Between knowing about the importance of value and contrast and juxtaposition of color and wanting simply to express the motion of the moment.

Fascinating to me to witness my interior process, to be aware of the dance and choices being made. I notice too, that I am humming, chanting. My body is singing to support my staying present with the movement and the colors and the expression.

I purposefully shift hands to mix it up and that bring arcs from the opposite direction, overlapping the first. That reminds me of how much I adore plaids – the under/over quality of the pattern – the web of weaving. Thinking about plaids as I type, takes me back to childhood memories of this special little book, which I still protect carefully.

Falling apart now, I remember studying it and wishing my surname was in this book so I could prove to myself that I am native to northern Europe.

In the painting I suddenly see a sun. I grab magenta and make rays but hate them and so “arc “ them out. I make lots of V shaped birds but as the painting thickens with paint, the birds simply become texture behind the arcs.

The interplay of plaid memories and painted arcs overlapping horizontal bands reminds me of the shimmering interbeddedness of living everyday, simultaneous interconnections, synchronicities, the visible and non-visible weaving our lives endlessly.

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