Happy Valentine’s Day

Photograph by Adair Heitmann (c)

Keep close to Nature’s heart . . . and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
– John Muir

The Power of Hope

One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver writes:
“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.”

For myself, as an exhibiting artist with a full-time communications job, and as a devoted mother and (fabulous) wife, plus as a writer and daughter and volunteer, my wonderful and full life currently doesn’t provide the time I seek, yet I deeply crave the power of privacy to create!

Santa, if you are listening . . . delight me with more private time to create in 2017!

Creativity and wellness message for today: Ask and ye shall receive.

 

Glimpsing a Possibility

“We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.”
-Ishmael Beah

Finally, Someone Who Understands! Thank you Misha

No longer will I feel guilty when I don’t want to talk with someone while I’m creating art in a community artists’ studio.

No longer will I feel ashamed that I don’t know Suzy Q, Barbi X., or John Z. when asked, “Why don’t you know them, they go there all the time?”

No longer will I apologize for getting snippy to my family when they interrupt me while I’m trying to choose which monoprint to submit to an exhibit, while reviewing art prints at our kitchen table.

Now I can proudly proclaim, “Don’t you know art is a very slow and fragile process? Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov told me so!”

While exercising this morning I heard on NPR about Baryshnikov’s Art Center in NYC, marking its 10th anniversary. Hearing Baryshnikov simply state the obvious changed my day, my week, and my world. He says that art is a fragile process and artists need privacy and space to create. I know that! Thinking back to when I had a separate studio space I remember those as the glory artist days. But I wanted more in life and co-created a multi-faceted, multi-use home and life. Yes, I adore our teenage son, but can’t a girl dream about “space, and light, and privacy?” That is just what Baryshnikov created for artists in New York City, an environment in which artists of all kinds can go and create to their heart’s content. Well done Misha!

Creativity and wellness message for today: Even if your kitchen table is filled with college tour brochures, applications, and forms, keep your vision of space, light, and privacy on the horizon.

Creative Gifts: Respond to What’s Inside You

Enjoying Japanese food and a glass of Chardonnay last night with a friend, I listened as she told me about joining a local artist’s collective. She is renting studio space, outside of her home. My friend was so happy to be back in the nest of like-minded creative souls. I was so lucky to be able to rejoice with her.

She said, “I haven’t painted, I mean really painted in 20 years.” I nodded, “I understand.”

Her longing, that she turned into bliss, reminds me of a quote from Joy Harjo’s book Crazy Brave.

“If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you, or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.”

Creativity and wellness message: Start today by listening to your inner drum beat. Respond to the calling of your gifts.

Making Art Fun: Step 7 – Listen to Your Inner Voice

Art + Time = Happiness. This equation sums up the two-day printmaking workshop my family gifted to me. I wrote about it in my last blog. Today’s tip on making art fun is about trusting that little voice inside you. I did that when I observed how excited I was as I anticipated the workshop. Gentle flutters erupted in my stomach each time I thought about it.

At the workshop, I decided to fly without a net. My intention was to enjoy the process of learning a new printmaking technique and not worry about the product or outcome. There I was in a sea of professional, exhibiting artists, all intent on creating pieces for their next exhibit. I chose to remind myself, again and again, I was at the workshop to have fun, explore and experiment. This attitude of abandon held me in a solid place of delight the entire weekend.

Yet, as my creative process neared completion, I had to know when my artwork was complete. Decades of serious art school training and real life experiences in meditation and trusting my intuition honed me well. Sometimes my inner voice was a simple exhalation. I knew when I’d exhaled there was a rightness to the color, texture, or composition. At other times, my inner voice was soft and literally spoke in my brain whispering the word, “Done.”

Click here to view my slide show from the workshop!

Creativity and  wellness message for today: Be adventurous. Listen to your inner voice in your mind, body, and spirit. Then follow through.

Making Art Fun: Step 2 – Use What You Have on Hand

If you stay in the art business long enough you start to see patterns. I’ve been an exhibiting professional artist for decades and I enjoy tracking the methods of my artistic madness. In my last blog about making art fun I wrote about keeping it simple. Today I’ll share Step 2: Use What You Have on Hand.

Several years ago I was asked by the gallery owner of Bell Gallery, one of my, then, premier exhibition spaces, to create a work of art for herself and her boyfriend. They made a tipi to travel with and camp in during the summer. They planned to stitch the gallery artists’ paintings to their nomadic abode. Having very little time to focus on the task I used what was on hand. In my studio I found what I considered to be a scrap, a test cloth of photo-sensitized fabric. I quickly glued and sewed it onto a square of un-primed canvas, and drew directional lines to blend the borders. I then stamped fun symbols and wrote a short spontaneous sentiment with rubber letter stamps encircling the central image. Voilà! A work of art that was not premeditated, not drafted out, not sweated over. A work of art that seized what was on hand and let that momentum build the creative expression.

Darryl Norem, the gallery owner and Guenther Riess loved the painting. They were so happy with it that it never made it onto the tipi. They rigged it on two standing poles that flanked the door opening to their temporary home every time they put it up. Their actions surprised me at the time, because I thought I just threw the mixed-media artwork together. I was honored that they put my art in a place of recognition, yet I couldn’t see the value of it as much as they did. Looking back on the piece years later I now see the spunk and liveliness of the canvas. I appreciate what they saw then, a work of art with creativity, heart and soul. Something that delights and intrigues the viewer. This was a lesson for me. What I thought was just a quick creation was actually something of far greater worth than I realized.

Fast forward to 2012 and 2013, when I had fun with art and participated in the world tour of artists’ sketchbooks called The Sketchbook Project. In both years I followed Step #2, had a ball and completed the projects on deadline. The pattern is that when pressed for time, what I create right out of the gate by using what’s at hand, without my ego getting in the way, makes the best art.

Creativity and wellness message for today: Cage your inner critic and use something on hand to ignite your creative spark.