Ganesha: Lord of Success

Ganesha, the elephantine Hindu god, the one to pray to when you have your heart set on something, is the muse for this montage. Actually, there are three elephants in this piece, two resin, one porcelain. I like that. Three wishes seems about right.

Hope Springs Eternal

For almost twenty years, I've held a picture of the life I most desire as an artist and writer, living close to nature's rhythms, the rhythms of daily household life. I imagine a life in which I can devote several hours each day to domestic chores and outdoor reverie, as many hours to setting my inspirations into words and image, with time and energy yet to embrace the considerable challenge of sharing my work with the world.

Here I am, living on a dead end road in a town that is 40% land preserve, with a garden and a dog and a supportive spouse, and just enough financial stability to say that, while certainly risky, nothing stands in my way but fears and insecurities. Part of my hesitation is about money, part of it is about turning away potential clients (why is it scary to say no?), part of it is that internal ego-crushing critic, chanting who do you think you are? in the unfriendliest tone

But I am soon to turn 40, and I can't let these fears and insecurities call the shots any longer.

When designer Stefan Sagmeister decided to close his studio to give himself a year off for creative explorations, his first bold move was to tell everyone. That way, he reports in his October, 2009 TED talk, The Power of Time Off, he wouldn't be able to chicken out.

This morning at the gym, a friend told me about her beloved assistant of twenty years, who died suddenly this week, just a month shy of retirement.

There are no guarantees.

Yesterday my neighbor and I walked our dogs together, and saw this pond along the way. I believe these patterns exist always in this pond, formed as underground springs push up toward the surface. Thanks to just the right combination of cold and snow, the invisible is revealed.

I was so inspired, I couldn't wait to get home so I could return immediately with my camera.

While shooting, I decided it was time to admit it: I am plotting a special year, beginning with my birthday in early March. I have already begun turning down work. I have my own underground springs, a million and one half-dreamed and partially completed projects that I will no longer push aside. Life is now!

Wishing

gouache and ink on heavyweight bristol paper, 14" x 11"
SOLD



I believe in the power of wishing. Active, creative wish-making (rather than passive longing, whiny "if only"s in moments of emptiness and desperation). I don't think it helps to cling to a wish, to squeeze it, worry it, focusing exclusively on the void in your life that your unfulfilled desire occupies.

I believe, instead, in creating a detailed visualization of whatever you want to bring into being. Blow your wish into a big pink balloon. As the old New Age Creative Visualization guru, Shakti Gawain advised, let it float away into the sky. You must trust that your wish will be heard by the powers that be, and that, if a path can be forged to its realization, the way will open up before you.

Release your wishes. Allow for the present moment, where you have acknowledged an unfulfilled desire. Allow for the perhaps difficult possibility that your wish will not come true. Allow for whatever emotion comes up in its wake. And most of all, allow for mystery, subconscious process, and invisible magic behind the scenes.

Mental Collage

Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor says our right brains are all about the present moment, taking in a vast collage of sensory information. Our left brains dissect the collage, organize the information, make associations with our past experiences in order to project into an imagined future. At the age of 37, she had a stroke and got to see her brain functioning—and NOT functioning— from the inside. She recently gave an amazing eighteen-minute talk on her "Stroke of Insight" that I highly recommend – in fact, I'm embedding the video into this very post (but you can also watch it here). It's inspiring, moving, funny, and educational. Can't get much better than that.

Aqueduct

My daily collage project, for anyone wondering, is NOT abandoned. I'm collaging right on schedule, but I'll be posting them in batches from now on - three or four (or seven) at a time. I wanted to give myself a break in order to squeeze in a few other pieces, like this painting (gouache and ink and watercolor on bristol paper, 17" x 14") which I call Aqueduct.

Looking at this painting again, and recalling the optimism I felt making it, I find myself thinking of water as a symbol for energy, for chi (or Qi), the life force. Just as the earth contains and channels water, our earthly bodies (and spirits and minds) contain and channel energy. Like plants and trees, drawing water up from below, so do we draw upon our stored resources as we plant seeds in our lives, as we allow ourselves to dream and move toward our dreams.

And no energy is wasted! The trees put moisture in the atmosphere, which feeds the clouds, which feeds the rain, which feeds the earth, which, in turn, feeds the trees.

Put your energy into the world!

#12 - Vitality

Today's collage, inspired by the desire to send good healing vibes to a dear friend in the hospital. And to myself. And to everyone.

Charted Territory

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open." – Martha Graham

In keeping with my thoughts on maps and mapping, it occurs to me that calendars are maps, maps of time, and that personal calendars are sketches of the landscape of our personal days. As I built today's collage, affixing layers of transparent tissue paper over a month of my life, I struggled a little with how transparent I wanted to be with an audience of strangers with my personal landscape. How much do I want to expose of myself? Because who am I but the sum of my actions, my thoughts, priorities, feelings, sensibility? I usually strive for complete transparency, not because I'm an exhibitionist, but because I want present myself – to myself – as honestly as possible.

Which leads me to this admission: I don't think much of today's collage.

But I'm beginning to understand that if I'm unwilling to mess around in the murky area, to be transparently awkward and risk falling on my face, I'll never break through to anything truly new.

I believe we all must stand smack in the middle of the no-man's-land between future possibility and "been there, done that" – in other words, be present with our limitations – before we can find our growing edge and push against it.

I ask myself now: should I have pushed this collage until it became something I'm proud of? Am I abandoning it midstream? Is this lazy? Is this a cop-out?

I'll answer with a question: Who am I to judge?

Maybe Martha Graham is right when she says it is not the individual's business to assess their own creative expression. Or maybe the edge I'm pushing against right now is simply the "stop worrying about it" edge. Maybe I have to trust that nothing will collapse if I make a boring collage. Maybe I have to take that risk before I can move into uncharted self-discovery, into new artistic growth, before I can move – unselfconsciously – off the map.

Thirty-Three Days

Since I'm on a concentric-circle kick, I felt I would be remiss not to include this little experiment developed out of thirty-three days of photographs and journal entries.

I know this is redundant, but I keep thinking about how every moment is framed by moments past; that right now, this instant, how I spend my today, will set the stage for how I experience tomorrow. It sounds like a high-pressure way to be, but it isn't. After all, the more I enjoy today, the more present I am, the more I'll enjoy, or at least be equipped for, tomorrow.

And there's something about expansion from the present, from the core. Something about embracing both past and future at the same time, though I don't have anything articulate to say on that right now. Presence = good. That's all.

Speaking of which, I am enjoying watching my husband make apple-walnut-cinnamon waffles (his specialty), while practicing his golf swing. There are less happy things in the picture, too, which I won't go into right now. But I embrace them as well, and all the more, because they can exist side-by-side with smiling husbands and cinnamon waffles.

Too bad Blogger doesn't host Flash animations (at least not easily). To see this one in action you'll have to go here and be patient while the white space fills: it takes a minute to load. A good opportunity to sit up, perhaps, breathe deep, and take stock of your own present moment?

Centering

This new blog WILL get underway, with links and all that. But for now, let's be HERE now, in this basically white space, full of potential.

Sometimes I think my artwork is all over the map, one piece having nothing in common with the next. But I am so wrong. I just held this one (a painting made for a wedding invitation) up against the one I posted previously.

Yes, I am obsessed with concentricity. So much so, in fact, that I just looked up the word, discovering that it, does indeed exist, and also, I like its definition: "having a common center, as circles or spheres"

Perhaps this is an overly spiritual idea, or overly romantic, or overly abstract, but here it is anyway: Don't we all have a common center? Not just an ALIKE center, but a SHARED center?

For example: one facet of that center is this: we are all located always and eternally in the PRESENT. Though we can lose ourselves in all kinds of fantasies of past and future, based on fear or based on longing, the reality remains the same. It is only from this present moment that we can create change in the story of our lives and worlds. In so doing, we change the course of the future, and the meaning of the past.

What if we, instead, operated entirely out of the moment? Out of right now? What if everywhere we looked, we saw not just the surface appearance of things, but into the depths? What if we slowed down right now, slowed down our breathing, relaxed our shoulders, relaxed our focus, our thoughts, our plans, our expectations of what the next five minutes might hold, and together, allowed this moment its full power and potential?