The Art of Asking Beautiful Questions

Journey 6"x6" oil, earth pigments, cold wax

"Poetry is the art of asking beautiful questions."  That line, from the workshop I did with David Whyte last Saturday, has rented a small bit of space in my head and keeps popping out for air.  Whyte showed us plenty of Irish hospitality (without the single malt) He read to us, told us stories, steeped us in poetry and asked us beautiful questions: questions like "what star just appeared in your life, that you did not know you were following?"

I think Whyte's poetry has such wide appeal because he invites each of us into the interior of our lives in ways that are both practical and mysterious. He takes us on a pilgrimage to somewhere we didn't know we wanted to go, but when we get there we recognize it as the necessary destination.  On Saturday he took us to the wind swept shores of Gallway Bay  and held us up to peek out the same window that Wordsworth did at Cambridge. He stood with us at Finestre while the moon hovered over our shoulders and we threw away our old boots.  He read from his most recent book "Pilgrim" and reminded us that he'd never walked the Camino but after a few more  sentences (because he's Irish, he said) he would be convinced that he had.

Royal Roads University (David Whyte workshop was here)

But mostly Whyte urged us to "start close in, don't take the second step or the third, take the first step, the one you don't want to take." He saw his job that day as teasing us out of our cocoons and onto the path to be "nourished and disturbed". The day was spent weaving in and out of the highways and side roads where we might have "conversations".  He invited us to have the courageous conversation, the one we don't want to have.  It might be with a friend, a spouse, your child, with yourself.  It's about being brave enough to say the thing that needs to be said. He observed that we are often afraid to initiate these conversations because we're not sure we can handle the response we'll get. There are so many conversations we can have: "with the horizon, with silence, with the unknown."  A good question Whyte suggested, is "what conversation am I not having with my heart and mind?"

He reminded us that the stories we tell ourselves, the ones about how things are, about how we are, are really conversations. He suggested that if we engaged in conversations with others in this same way we talk to ourselves we wouldn't have many friends! I found this framing of "self talk" as conversation helpful in looking at the stories that rattle around in my head.  "No, I guess I really don't need to say that, it's not very helpful. I really could open a different conversation."  News flash!

Too warm for a sweater in Victoria?  With the Camas at Beacon Hill Park

Whyte invites us to cultivate a relationship with the unknown.  We spend most of our time shying away from the unknown, trying to wrap things up and get them into the cage of the known asap.  But the truth is we are always walking into the unknown.  If we could do some sort of measurement we would probably find there is more unknown to us than known.  And  so we have this uncomfortable relationship with a large part of our life. Whyte suggests we could ground ourselves in the unknown.

In his summing up Whyte suggested our first step was to stop having the conversation we're having now. That's the only pathway to change. Most of our conversations arise from habit. If we stop the conversation we're having now then the opportunity exists to begin a new conversation.  And the new conversation can emerge out of the silence. Conversation gives rise to invitations which produce seeds that can then be harvested.

Such a rich opportunity, to consider what is it that I want to say, need to say or conversely what is it that I'm avoiding saying? And why am I avoiding it? An even more interesting question. And now, let the conversations begin.

Conversations With The World

11"x14"  acrylic on canvas - Geography of Moss

I woke this morning to a phrase whispering in my head "everything is sacred".  I have been holding up words to the light as potential talismen and good travelling companions, but perhaps I have a phrase, instead?  The impatient me is apparently on holiday and I am happy to roll things around a bit and swish them gently to get a feel for them.  Perhaps sometimes when you look for something, what you find is a little different than what you went in search of.  To find what you really need, you require the gift  of openness.

Often we're so busy looking for answers and solutions, that we can't see one that hovers slightly outside our line of vision.  I imagine this happens to me quite a bit because I often charge off with fixed ideas of what I'm looking for and I'm very often in a hurry to find my "answer" and get on with the next thing on my list.  Life is always holding out valuable little lessons on in it's gentle palm, along with our solutions if we can just scrunch up eyes the right way and pull the slightly ethereal into focus.

On this grey, rainy morning other seemingly wise words floated up, cloud like  "Everything is whispering to you".  This made me think of David Whyte's poem "Everything Is Waiting For You" and then I thought of how he speaks of conversations.  Yes, we are always having conversations with the things around us and with the thoughts that manifest. Often we do all the talking (we're a bossy lot, us 21st century, logic addled peeps).  What if we could get really quiet and listen a little more (says she to herself. Always what we write is what we most need to hear).

11"x14" oil and cold wax on paper "Travel Diary"

The veil of sleep was lifted off ever so gently this morning because I was treated to a little snippet of dream.   In my dream there were rows of u shaped hoops in a garden. Each with a small rose plant by it (bush would be too large a word here).  I was going along the rows with cuttings and tying them carefully with a twist tie to the hoops.  Trouble is I was tying them up in the air, not at ground level, so they had no access to the nourishment of the earth.  I took this as a conversation about projects I have been engaged in and ones I am eyeing on the horizon, the rows and rows of things. It seems I am being  reminded that  even if I work very hard at something, if it is not rooted in some ground that can nourish it, how can it grow.  I hear whisperings about wasted effort, about more care and attention to what is truly important.  I hear whispers about being "grounded".  Often I find my dreams are very literal with a slightly funny edge to them.

So this seems a little Monday reminder to us, as we walk into a new week, to see everything as sacred, and as a conversation.  Everything is whispering to you, even the parking ticket, the plugged sink, the steaming cup of strong coffee you are drinking.  What if we took time to really listen and see?  How would our week unfold? Come tell me the stories of you conversations and I will tell you mine. Happy Monday.

What's In A Word?

road through the mountains 20"x20"  oil, earth pigments, cold wax on panel

Last week Robyn at Art Propelled wrote about her word for the year: "Stillness".  I was inspired by her post.  Janice Mason Steeves painted "Silence" for a period. I'm not sure if it was a whole year but she focused on that one word in her work for an extended time.  There is something in me that is drawn to this idea, the contemplation of one word. Perhaps it is the simplicity; the fact that my pea brain might be able to hold a single, solitary unattached word, a free floating group of letters revolving around a thought, a feeling, an essence.  The other thing that draws me, moth like to this idea, is the opportunity to dive deeply into a word, to watch it grow, expand and fill my world.  I could inhabit the word, no maybe if I was lucky I could become the word.  Say if the word was poodle, people might start looking at me and remarking, " don't you think she's starting to look a bit like a poodle, no, no maybe it's just the new haircut?"

Stillness, silence these are lovely words. I see the potential for exploration and growth with these words as companions.  I remember having a conversation years ago with a doctor, who had said some things I didn't care for. I reminded him that words are powerful and that they have the potential to either hurt or heal.  We use them so off handedly in our everyday world.  I can't count the times I have been wounded unintentionally by a dull thud of a word.  And I can only imagine the number of dangerously sharp words I have flung in haste and unawareness at others.  Perhaps we could heal ourselves with a single word? Or the other way around?

May Peace Increase On Earth 20"x 24" mixed media on canvas

So Robyn got me thinking about choosing a word for the year (even though we are well into the year). I liked her idea of having a friend to bounce your word back and forth with over the year; someone to exchange word musings with.  But then there's the important thing; the word.  What word would I choose?  I am a bit of a curmudgeon with a slight rebel streak, so I wouldn't want anything too "nice" or "sweet", and I wouldn't want anything sentimental or over wrought. And nothing too assertive or aggressive.  I don't want a word like "do" or "change" or "athlete" as suggested on one website I looked at.

I think first, my word needs to be personally meaningful.  It needs to be something like a koan, something that intersects or expresses something I want to be or have more of in my life (as in Janice an Robyn's words).  It needs to have these qualities to keep me engaged I think.  I don't want to leave it languishing in a book somewhere after a few days, crying sad little print tears that run like mascara because I have given up on it so soon.

With Our Thoughts 16"x16" mixed media on canvas

I am thinking about "ease" or "trust" as potential words.  Ease sounds a bit lazy and maybe a little "new agey" and "trust", well it sounds a little like motherhood and apple pie.  (This is me rolling the little word marbles around.) Lazy or apple pie?  hmmm.  These words call to me because I'm a "struggler".  I am inclined to see things as difficult or make things difficult, more difficult that they need to be.  And in the seeing of things as hard, well you know how that goes....  But I am working on letting that part of me dissolve like sponge toffee left out in the rain.  So I thought, what if I had a word I could hold like a little talisman, a little magical, glowing bit of the alphabet.  A word that might relax that inclination to wrestle, to stop me from writhing around like someone tangled up in a bedsheet, even when there is no bedsheet.  Now that would be a good word.

And how about you?  Do you have a word? For the year?  For the day? Do words call to you, sing like sirens, take you on little journeys?  A good word is a powerful thing. And a good companion.

Painting In The Life Lab

8"x8" The Ocean Has Stories To Tell (available on etsy)

I have been painting away without that much to show for it.  And that has become okay for me.  Big lesson for the art materialist!!  It seems we like to have something to show for our time. Our cultural and educations system encourage this, don't you think?  It seems I have relieved a lot of internal pressure by moving from a place of feeling frustrated about this lack of output (where I spent a lot of last year) to being okay with just being with the process.  And it seems I had to go through that frustration to get there.  As my old Zen teacher would say, "it's not on our timelines.  We do our work and then let go."  And that allows things to shift on their own.

My painting sessions work  best when I settle myself first with some meditation or sitting before I jump in.  If I am too quick to pick up the brush I end up mucking about.  Painting is so akin to spiritual practice.  I mean it's the same in life. If I jump into something without the ground of awareness firmly gathered around me, I tend to muck about and potentially get in trouble in one way or another.  The good thing about trouble or mucking is that once you recover your awareness it's always instructive!

The other thing I've noticed as I  spend a lot of time in the studio is that I have "go to" things that I do on a canvas.  How much like the rest of life is this??  Habit. I have painting habits that have evolved and they don't always serve me well.  It can be like the definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."  So sometimes I find it's good to change up the surface I work on or the colours I favour, or the time of day I work. This movie about Gerhard Richter is really interesting if you work in abstraction.  Even he gets mucking about and finds himself painting over and over things that don't quite seem right. It's a great watch.  He says things like, "sometimes I like a painting for a day or two" and "I know when something is done, it just feels right."

8"x8" cold wax on canvas "The Forest Has Wings"

I've been listening to a lot of Tom Campbell lately. He's a Nasa physicist with some very interesting ideas about consciousness and reality. He says we're all evolving toward love which is the highest form of being.  Kind of interesting for a scientist, don't you think? He says things like our human existence is a kind of learning lab and that we are always evolving (or dying), that there is no static state.  This idea is pretty akin to the Buddhist idea of impermanence.  There is also a great talk by scientist, Rupert Sheldrake here (Sheldrakes talk is the second one on this link) where he expresses some pretty interesting ideas about the nature of consciousness.  It seems these ideas have caught my interest as an explanation to how things work out there in the world and beyond. It offers a new relationship to the world around us. The world of the paranormal and the normal are actually not separate.  For these guys the world of the paranormal is not crazy and unexplainable.  They make perfect sense of it. It all fits together, just as we imagined it should; and has some interesting implications for what we do and how we do it.

As always life is deeply spiritual experience for me.  I listened to a great talk via "The Awakening Joy" course by Zen Hospice leader, Frank Ostaseski.  It reminded me how easily and habitually I steel myself against what I don't like with "resistance".  How subtle resistance can be.  Often I find that in trying to fix or heal some health issue I am subtlely resisting it. I just want it to go away!  Non resistance doesn't preclude trying to work with problems, it just means we also need to be with them.  Sometimes the solution is contained in the problem itself, well maybe always??  And how can we find it if we are so busy pushing it away (says she as she talks to herself) He pointed out the simple maxim of"what we resist, persists."

Oh and in case you are inclined, like so many of us, to say unkind things to yourself, you might enjoy watching Kristin Neff's TED talk on self compassion.  That's all I know for today! Have a great weekend.

Trust & Asking

If you haven't seen this TED talk by Amanda Palmer, you absolutely must. Okay, you don't have to but I swear, your missing something if you don't.  Especially if you're an artist because she plays with the concept of how an artist makes a living. By happenstance and personal awareness Amanda fell into a relationship of "trust" and "asking" with her audience.  She found that the people who loved her music were willing to support her in a monetary way, especially when her record label cut her for selling the small sum of 25,000 records.  So now she gives away her music and asks people to support her, 2 separate acts, instead of the one that we usually associate with making a living in the arts: you buy something and pay for it.  She's raised a million bucks this way!  Awesome, yes?

But that got me thinking about visual art and if somehow her brilliant paradigm could translate into offering visual art to audiences in the same way?  So I'm tossing this question out into the stratosphere.  Is there a way this might work for visual art?  What are your thoughts on the subject?  Really, I want to know.  Because I love this idea.

First my little mind goes, well there's the material and the shipping.  But you know Amanda Palmer had to invest a huge wack of money to record her music, and then there's the hours of creation that went into it. It's a big leap, believing in yourself and trusting that others will also believe in you enough that you can continue to do your creative work.

I love the idea of doing something that goes against how our consumer culture is structured.  I love the idea of trusting people.  I love the idea of connection with our audience, whatever the medium.  I love the idea of feeling that people support each other.  Is that fairy tale stuff, people?  Am I related to Peter Pan or some other ethereal character with wings?? Or perhaps that's Polyanna leaning over my left shoulder?

Journey 6"x6" on etsy

There is  a lovely young man who does some heavier work for us around our property and when we first met him we asked what do you charge.  He said, well you pay what you think it's worth.  And you know, we probably always pay more than the going hourly rate.  And we think fondly of him, we think of him as generous and trustworthy.  We know that we are supporting him and his family and it makes us feel good at the end of the day when we hand over a little pile of bills!  We never imagine that he isn't working hard enough or that he's adding in a little time here and there, or that we aren't getting our money's worth.  It's weird, but then so is the way our minds work.  There is something about this "trust" that makes us all feel good and empowered.

oil, cold wax on paper, 8"x10" on etsy

So my mind is turning these things over, sifting through the ideas, following the threads of each loosely woven thought.  There is something about these ideas that carry the scent of the new economy on the breeze. The potential for change, for growth and evolution make me feel excited and hopeful. There is a spiritual aspect to this way of exchanging creative life for monetary support; one that embodies faith, trust and connection.  Am I crazy?  Is this possible?  And if so how do we express it?  Where do we pick up the thread?

I am working on it and if I wake up with any fully hatched brilliance I will let you know.  Last night I woke up from a dream where I'd been bitten by a small copper coloured reptile.  But that's another story.  I'll save it for next time.

This Mysterious Thing

What is a life? This mysterious thing we possess, given to us without asking, without instructions. This quivering mass of flesh cast into a place alive with chaos and joy and danger, with it's own momentum, with it's own sweet and terrifying signatures. Do we live it on auto pilot like the one in my gas stove, always lit just a little, burning a low flame?

Where does the journey of our heart meet the road map of the soul? Can I really taste, see, feel? I mean deeply, in some way that passes through this paper thin skin into the deep parts of me that are ready to lap it up, that are waiting to experience the richness and terror of being alive, unprotected, unmitigated, Open.

This thing I call my life seems stitched together by bits of everyday experience:  a chance meeting here, a movie, a piece of art, a song, a bar of soap. Occasionally insights bubble up from the deep well of knowing that lives inside me, and I say, ah I see now. Something inside me is ignited and I see motives, and maps and visions of possibility. I see tiny keys to doors locked somewhere deep inside some past me, some future me, some simmering me.

Sometimes I think my heart has been locked inside an armoured car for years and then mysteriously it is set free by a song. Sometimes it seems I can hardly feel anything and then a friend pulls me into a gallery and we understand how strength and vulnerability are interwoven, as we gaze on a sculpted face.  Sometimes just when I think I can never really know another being, someone stirs me with a story of how they died on an operating table and came back to life. Sometimes when I'm thinking it is too hard to be alive I am offered a parent's story of navigating the churning waters of a child's addiction without a compass.

Here are the bits that have been flavouring the rich, vital and surprising broth that is my recent life.  Tell me what fantastic journeys your life is taking you on these days? We are travelers without a map, following the gulf winds of our hearts. Wishing you a wondrous journey that opens your heart and affords you good passage. And always we know there are no safe passages through the straits and isthmus of an authentic life.

I am smitten by the integrity, purity and commitment to supporting the environment and traditional cultures of the personal care products at Sinfully Wholesome.


I have been singing with joy at the dignity of the human spirit after watching the documentary "Searching For Sugarman"


I have been gobsmacked and mesmerized by the beauty and serenity of the sculpture of local artist Lynn Demers.

And I have been tantalized by the fermented creations I've been conjuring up in the kitchen: kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi and pickled ginger. Looking forward to making some sourdough and other goodies when I get my copy of Sandor Katz "The Art of Fermentation"

Oh yeah, and there's been some art but that's for next time.

Noticing Things

Weather Map of The Heart 12"x12" cold wax on canvas

I have been noticing things, things like how much I want from a moment, just a single innocent moment. When I sit, if I am honest with myself, I see the long slender digits of desire greedily fingering the air. I want this moment to be a certain way. I might want it to make me happy or entertain me, make me feel safe or comfortable or offer me a little drama so that I might escape from the boredom of a grey February morning.

All this wanting and noticing is like what is happening in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant while you sit out front sipping wine and chatting.  But when I sit quietly in the kitchen of my mind, I see how much I try to cook the moment so as to make its flavour just right for me. I am kneading and pulling on each little fibre of now.

I also notice how I am not content to just work the moment but I lean anxiously into the future looking for the next moment or hour to please me, seeing what I might wring from the day. If we are honest we can notice how much we "want" without pause:  how we want things to be easy or simple or sweet, people to cooperate with and like us, how it would be nice to get some good news or a special treat.  Fill in the blanks. And with all the wanting I notice what it stirs: agitation, busy mind, nervous energy. I notice all these underlying weather patterns of my heart and mind when I am quiet. If I weren't sitting in meditation they would simply form the ground which the day travels over.

All this noticing reminds me to stop, to take a breath and just be. I remember how pleasant it is to just be right here, right now, without wanting.  And I notice how hard this is, how the momentum of habit has hardwired wanting into my brain.  I notice how much energy is preserved, even cultivated in this state of not wanting, how my heart sighs in relief when I am simply with life as it is.  I notice the startling and mysterious sound of rain drops plopping into the pond as I make my way around the shore. I am gobsmacked by the chartruesey greenness of the moss on the roof.

As I did a drawing exercise from my Frederick Franck book the other evening I notice how hard it  is to really see.  As I drew a small fallen leaf from my indoor ficus tree, I notice how my mind jumped ahead to fill in the lines with how it imagined the leaf looked.  I noticed how hard it was to slow down and simply see, to let the hand follow the eye. The mind is such an impatient, bossy creature!

So in between noticing things, I have been making my own cold wax with gamsol and beeswax. It smells divine, sweet like the beeswax (even though the gamsol is a petroleum based product). This seems much more do-able for me than the orange oil solvent which was a natural product, but intensely smelly. Turpentine is a natural product and also intensely smelly.

I have been doing an online course with Eric Maisel which is essentially coaching for artists. I am liking it a lot.  It deals in this lovely straight forward way with how to actually get down to work, how to deal with some of the unhelpful self talk that can surround the creative process and lots of helpful info on working with stress and anxiety and thoughts about marketing.

I have been listening to the World Tapping Summit!  Have you heard of tapping or EFT.  It uses meridian points (as in acupuncture) paired with some statements around things that might be issues for us; health issues, emotional issues.  I am finding it really interesting and it feels like there's something to it.

And thanks to Eric Maisel I have actually been painting everyday, first thing in the morning that's the trick.  I have some coffee, do my qi gong, make my juice and go off to paint for a while. January has flown by and now February is blasting through. I hope your winter days are rich and filled with inner and outer adventure! Where has this new year carried you off to?