Migrations, Dreams & Habits

new work 16"x20"

I am part of a migration, not one guided by the moon or involving birds or butterflies. No one has fixed a metal band round my leg or tagged my ear as part of a study, but still it's happening out there. I suspect you are aware of it too.  It's a technological migration of sorts, one where I sense small currents quietly causing people to drift from the blog world over to facebook or follow the shifting breezes to instagram. Robyn Gordon's lovely curated collections have migrated from her Art Propelled blog to facebook. Jeane Myer's moved house from her blog, Art It to Instagram and I have joined her there for no other reason than to see her amazing work as she creates and shares it.

There are many other bloggers, that were part of community when I ventured here with my first post in December 2008, that like me, simply post less often. I am not leaving quite yet, but it's more of a second home than a primary residence these days. I sense this is true for blogger friends like Lynette Monteiro of 108Zenbooks and Lynne Hoppe (who is also sharing her work on instagram).  Do I have less to say? Do I think about painting and practice less? Not really. It's just that those thoughts don't make it to these pages so often anymore. The excitement of sharing on a blog has met time and they have wandered off together. The Buddha talked about this (not blogs, facebook and instagram) but change. It's the one thing we can always count on. Change is a constant.

Noticing the virtual migratory patterns did give me cause to think about why and what I post. There are artists that share what materials they're using or simply post the work they've been doing. There are those that write about where their practice is at the moment. It's about connecting, sharing what they know in the spirit of offering help and inspiration to others. When I thought about what I want to share these days, it's the things that excite me most, things that I think others might be interested in discovering too.

Trails 12"x12"

So here's a little goody bag of what I've been exploring lately. There's lucid dreaming with Charlie Morley. Lucid dreaming just seems like such a good thing to me and Morley talks about it with passion and clarity. We sleep 1/3 of our lives so being lucid in our dreams expands the time available to us and offers a connection to our inner life that the conscious mind doesn't. Probably most importantly, if you believe in any intermediate state between this life and the next, it prepares you to navigate that.

We listened to this great series of talks , called Awake in our Bones by Martin Aylward on a short home retreat. They were inspiring and expanding, a great companion to a few days of sitting. He has a fresh and clear way of speaking about life and the dharma.

I am curious about all the new brainwave technology and ended up on a site called iAwake that has lots of little samples to listen to and a freebie if you care to share your email address.

Canyon Rain 6"x6"

I've also been re-reading "Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself" by Joe Dispenza and doing some of his meditations. His work is part of the quantum consciousness movement that focuses on how our thoughts create our world. That belief is part of basic Buddhist thought but Dispenza and others focus on using this to create conditions we might want to find in our lives. I'm not talking about "let's get a new car" but working with more stubborn mind states that might affect our health, how we use our time, our worldview and our happiness. I am finding it particularly helpful in my attitude to my painting. In Buddhist thought we might call it trust or faith. For athletes an aspect of performance is wrapped up in mental attitude. Is it any different for artists?

On January 1st I kidnapped a vintage mason jar from the cupboard and made it in to my gratitude jar. I cut up cute little pieces of paper and find things to be grateful for each evening and pop them in the jar. I find the physical act of having a jar a much more powerful reminder than a journal for recording these tidbits. I am finding that simply turning the mind from grumbling over little things to appreciation is a powerful reorientation for a somewhat aversive mind. Here's a lovely little website on gratitude.

And back in the world of things the wood stove in my studio finally got hooked up so other than some storage and a comfy chair my studio can take a bow and pronounce itself finished. It is amazing to have this space to work in. I can while away the hours, listening to the rain on the metal roof or keep company with the big trees out my windows and the ducks on the pond. I look forward to warmer days when I can throw open the door and windows.

And you, what have you been up to that fills your days with joy and passion?

Painting, Chopping Vegetables & A Bow To The Spiritual Badger

Why I Love The Wind 16"x20"

I was chopping vege for dinner one night with my daughter, who does some meditation coaching. "How's the painting going?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know", I said.  It seems like I move paint around on the canvas and never really like anything that turns up.  It feels like I paint the same thing over and over and feel frustrated that I'm not getting anywhere." She looked at me and said, "hmm, that sounds like the same thing you said two years ago."

"That does sound about right," I said, appreciating the honesty and her willingness to share even though I had a knife in my hand.

"So you're not getting anything you like when you paint? Do you know what you like?" she asked

"I like something light. I like some scratching and texture. I like greens and blues and neutrals, greys, soft transitions from one colour to another.  But I rarely seem to get something that pleases me."

16"x 16" Coming In For A Landing

"I wonder if you're seeing a painting as problem that you want solved and out of the way?" She pondered

"Hmm, that's true, I think.  I want a satisfying outcome without too much trouble.  And it feels like I've been at this for a long time without much reward.  It's interesting, because this conversation makes me think of my friend Jeane Myers over at Art It.  I love the way she thinks!  She really perks up when she has a creative problem to solve in a painting.  That's juicy to her and she rises to the challenge. It really makes her curious and interested."  (I also added inappropriately that I wanted her brain.)

"I also love that she says she learns from her paintings," I added.  It seems I'm not the best student and my paintings have given up on me.

"So," said the coachy daughter, "what if you focused more on being curious about the process when you go to paint, rather than the actual painting.

11"x14" How To Get From Here To There

So I made some notes so I could share with you (and with me) and the next time I went to paint I tried to remember to:

-If you are used to thinking of your creative work as a problem or fraught with problems, sense how this feels and try to adopt a different stance.
-Be curious about how you work, watching what you do and how it makes you feel (miraculously I am a whole lot neater when I paint after doing this.  Before I seemed to rush and a mess of brushes and paper grew around me. That made me feel unsettled as the chaos grew)
-Be curious about what emerges on the canvas.  Take time to stand back a lot more than usual.  Jeane talks about having a conversation with the painting.  I think a lot of the time I don't give the painting enough space to say anything. I am like the friend that blathers on. Poor painting never gets a word in edgewise.
-Notice how you feel inside. When I felt agitated and tight, I found it was time to stop and refocus, otherwise I went on to mucking (which could go on for a very long time and feel very unsatisfying.)  Sometimes it's just time to go for coffee, have a walk, take a break.
-Importantly, trust that you can solve any "creative situation" you find in front of you. (In other words, believe you are up to the task.)  This, I found creates a very powerful, positive feeling.
-Contemplate situations in life where you are successful and try to transfer that attitude to painting. Do you write with ease, cook confidently? How do you feel inside when you trust that things are going to work out?  Sometimes it's all about attitude.  Maybe it's always, all about attitude?
-Sometimes just do the opposite of what you might normally do to shake things up.  Do you always paint in a certain palette?  Do the opposite. Stand up. Sit down. Use paper. Listen to music, or different music. Try silence or spoken word.

I have found it so helpful to consider the deeper aspects of what I was doing and how I was approaching it. I learned first hand how doing the same thing over and over is the definition of insanity (or at least frustration).  I learned that focusing on the process, strangely creates a better outcome than focusing on the painting (or specific work at hand).

And I will end with a story that my coach/daughter told me about a yoga teacher that her friend called the "spiritual badger".  As they stood holding a really difficult pose, he said, "and how you do this, is how you do everything in life." With many bows to the spiritual badger.

The Dharma of Art or Two Days In Jeane's Studio

 painting by Jeane Myers

It's amazing how things fit together if you let them. I recently spent a weekend on retreat with Rick Hanson and then slipped below the 49th parallel to spend some time in the studio of Jeane Myers from Art It.  The retreat and the studio time melted deliciously into a unified whole, where painting and dharma practice had the sweet, tantalizing flavour of a favoured treat. The days in Jeane's light filled studio were punctuated with conversations that plunged immediately into the deep end of the pool. "It's not really about the individual piece, it's more about the process and how it connects to the rest of the way we live our life." I'm paraphrasing Jeane here. Yes, yes, I have seen how painting is the condensed milk version of what I spill out in the world.

She asked questions that I stumbled and sputtered over, like "why do you paint?"  This is not casual, filling the space question.  Jeane, a former theatre director is gathering; gathering information so she might help you find that button you dropped on the sidewalk and have been searching for, forever.

Jeane Myers Studio

If you stop by here once in a while you have heard me whine about frustration with my process, how I feel I don't know what I'm doing and that I am never happy with what I paint. (that's the Coles notes on my whinging as the Brits call it).  And there are great similarities in the way I go about my life, hoping for the quick, tidy fix and on to the next thing.  "Distress tolerance" Hanson calls it and it's a muscle I'm working on.

Another studio view

I have followed Jeane's blog for some time now and I LOVE her work. On many occasions I have been stopped in my gumboots as she obliterates a painting that I would have called a keeper.  This fearlessness and dedication to growth and process hooked me.  I see in her a person that is willing to stand on the edge, who rejects security in favour of growth.  In a way, the how she does it, is almost more important than what she does, for me.  But it's what she does that stops the eye and makes it settle down for a closer look.

We are such interesting creatures, us humans. What I told Jeane I was on the hunt for was "form" in my work.  I felt that abstract composition was a big hairy mystery to me, well actually I left out the hairy part.   By hour 2 of our time together a little light started flashing on the internal dashboard.  I didn't really come to learn about form and composition.  I came to learn how to have a conversation with my painting. And isn't that life?  Often what we think we need is not really it.  We just need a wise guide to push aside the tangled branches and show us where the trail really is.

small work I did in Jeane's studio

I needed to be able to learn from my work.  And doesn't that translate into every place in life? If someone can give us the tools, we can fish forever, instead of constantly coming back like a little bird, hoping someone will feed us.  Jeane displayed a razor sharp knack of cutting through the tangle and getting to  the real issue.  And while I had read about this "conversing with your work" I just never really got it.  I had puzzled over John Daidoo Loori's descriptions of standing in front of his work and waiting for something to shift. For me shift never happened, maybe without the f, but that's another story.

Somehow by the end of the first day, somewhere inside me I understood what "having a conversation" meant. By having me constantly turn my work around, it somehow released my busybody, thinking mind. That simple process freed a deeper, inner eye.  Suddenly I felt more comfortable, more connected to the work.  My goodness that canvas and I were chattering away at each other. I teased that I was channeling Jeane.  But in truth there is something communicated energetically by someone who knows what they are doing and has trust and confidence in the process.

Jeane's work waiting to go to the Simon Mace Gallery

In one of her posts Jeane talked about finding the "arbitrary" parts of a painting, the parts that don't work, the parts that detract and weaken the real meat (tofu for you vegetarians) of the piece.  When she wrote about this in her blog, it seemed like she was speaking in tongues.  What?  Arbitrary?  I couldn't imagine identifying the arbitrary.  And yet as we worked and looked and talked, slowly I could see it.  I am still on training wheels with this one, but I have some sense of "the arbitrary".  Before it truly sounded like a foreign language.

It was 2 days packed with so much learning, more than I could ever imagine.  Sometimes it felt like things were being communicated by osmosis.  As a teacher, Jeane displayed a complete lack of ego and  generosity of spirit.  "Here, what do you think is arbitrary in my painting?  How would you do it if it was in your style?"  She was so interested in figuring out the puzzle of what I needed.  My hunt was her challenge.  You can travel a long way to find a Dharma teacher with that same curiosity and attention to the task.

More of Jeane's painted goodness

One of the things that impressed me the most about Jeane was her understanding of how to learn from her process and the actual piece in front of her.  I loved drinking in her positive attitude (no that would be guzzling). At one point she said something like, "you have your pros and your cons. What is really interesting and where all the excitement is, is in the "cons".  That's where the work and growth is."  As someone who has spent a lot of time feeling frustrated by the challenge this was like being teleported to another planet.  Sometimes we have to look through someone else's eyes to be able to really see.

So we never took out a colour wheel or talked much about paints or galleries.  We jumped right off the deep end, me with my water wings and Jeane swimming out in front, calling out that the water was fine and that you could learn a lot from just putting one arm in front of the other.

And while my retreat with Rick Hanson was great, I can't even begin to communicate what 2 days in Jeane's studio were like.  I wish for you all, whatever your art, a mentor, an art spirit that is just the right fit for you, to encourage you and to fish out of you all that is good and amazing. It's in there.  Some people excel at helping you dip into the pond of what's hiding in your heart. If they're like Jeane they actually thrive on the challenge.

Getting A Big, Free Unusual Happy Life

Small Abstract in matte 11"x14"

For my birthday I got myself a big new free happy unusual life! Nice of me, don't you think? I've been wanting this for quite some time now but every year I forget. Mostly I am never quite sure where to get this, what it looks like and if I can afford it.  Can you think of a better gift, really?  You might even want this yourself?  Oh, did I mention it's a book? By Nina Wise. No I forgot, well memory's not what it used to be and there are up sides to that. The book is subtitled "self-expression and spiritual practice for those who have time for neither" It is my good fortune to have time for both, but still the book appeals.

I like to think of a birthday the same way I think of the turning of the year on January 1st.  Our birth was a new year for us as we inhaled our first breath and this is the anniversary of it. I like to think of my birthday as a time of re-orientation and reflection, a time to consider where I might  go from here, to consider and set intentions, instead of just stumbling along the well worn ruts or reciting the lines of my life by rote. And always with a nod to the bigger picture and the fact that life may have other plans for me.

And of course more than anything, a birthday is a time to be grateful for life so far.  The normal inclination is to pick at what remains undone like some small sore, to notice what doesn't please and what we wish we hadn't done. But there is a moratorium on this line of thinking that comes accompanied by a bar of chocolate (it's a party, right?). This is a time of celebration, don't you think? We tend, in our busyness, in our usual state of partial awareness to forget the essence of these defining moments. Someone bakes a cake, someone buys us a gift, we get a few phone calls, maybe have a nice dinner but the deeper essence of it scuttles along the ocean floor of our lives. I say, get out the Zen pom poms and do a little cheer, shout into the forest. What is the sound of one more year passing? Which way are we pointing ourselves, deeper into the forest or craning, like a wise seedling toward the light?

This year my dharma radar has picked up some previously hidden hot spots.  The power of our minds and how we can train them  in more wholesome ways of being has been an important aspect of practice this year.  A retreat, a general tiredness of the landscape of fear and the book the Buddha's Brain were all auspicious opportunities, pointing me in this direction. I have spent some time just being with worry and fear, getting a taste of their particular flavour in the body and then watching them move through time and again like little dust storms of angst. Seeing how these emotions pull like twisted stitches on the fabric of my days has been sobering.  Seeing that I have a choice to sew a different stitch has made all the difference.  The power of the mind led me to consider  the energy of intention and its cultivation. Like any year, this one has been rich with opportunity to wake up. I like to think that the keel of my little boat has balanced a little more evenly and steadily this turn around the pond (even if I don't have both oars in the water all the time). I have been reminded of the preciousness of this human life by some brave souls which has encouraged me to consider how I really want to spend my time.

So in the tradition of the native people of this land who give gifts when they hold a celebration, I would like to invite anyone who would like a small trinket of art to send me their snail mail address and I will pop a little something in the mail to you. It seems a fitting way to hold a party.

And here are few of the treasures that have come to live with me and give me great delight, bring beauty to my eyes and  and inspire me.

By Jeane Myers

by Juana Almaguer (Gallery Juana on etsy)

Tag by Leslie Avon Miller 

Painting As Social Activity?

I started this little abstract at a painter's group I went to last Friday.  I was invited to join a little group at the community hall near where I live.  It's not a class, no instructor.  But painting as a group activity?  I couldn't quite imagine it.  To me it seems a solitary process. I usually scratch and scrape and wipe paint on and off.  I sit and look. Scrape some more. It's a messy, bumbling kind of process and often I haven't much to show for it at the end of the day.  It made me chuckle really, what would I take, what would I work on. I imagined myself looking a bit like a mad person with my sand paper and filthy paint rag, hands a moldy shade of green.

My little ego would have been happy to stay home, so in direct contravention to it's self protective desires I packed up a little box, secured it with a bungey chord and headed for the hall. I took a book I'd picked up on painting abstracts by Rolina van Vliet (Painting Abstracts) and some canvas paper that I ripped into small squares. I took some sunflower seed pate (not for rubbing on the canvas) but for the eat, drink and be merry part of the afternoon that happens before the paint comes out.  At a certain point in the afternoon, chatting naturally subsided and everyone worked. It was interesting to be in silence in a group of people (not sitting meditation). Occasionally  someone would ask for input. It was a relaxed, supportive atmosphere, comfortable and pleasant. After 3 hours I had two tiny paintings to finish up in front of the fire the next evening. I am happy to report that snacks were tasty and the company convivial. One aspect of the group is social but also members seem to appreciate that mapped out time to sit down and work, no house tidying or avoidance activity.

As you can see from this second little paint creature I'm still street fighting with composition but I attach hope to Malcolm Gladwell's idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. And I've got a lot of hours left!  A couple of weeks ago I found two second hand books Rolina VanVliet on abstract painting, a great score for $15.  There are lots of exercises for exploring materials and composition.  I like the composition exercises best, and sometimes it's just nice to come at something from another angle.  Jeane over at Art It has a great post on how she reconstructs a painting she's not happy with.  I love the way she continually turns the canvas.  Why didn't I think of that? Always new things to learn!  That's what makes me jump out of bed in the morning!

More on the painting front-- Last week I received a 2 1/2 hr video of Peter London painting.  My daughter and I poured a glass of wine (each, no sharing!) and sat down to watch.  The video appealed to the voyeur that lurks in all of us.  Have you ever wished you could just watch an artist paint and hear their thoughts as they work, that it might offer some clues or just satisfy some curiosity? To  this end, Henry Ganzler filmed London from start to finish as he creates a painting. For me the video fulfilled the wish to be  the fly on the studio wall. It was fun to watch his calm approach to the whole process, his reverence for his materials, his measured way of working and his personal, quirky way of using materials.  I felt the long hours of his studio work in the confident way he approached the whole process. He talked about where his idea for the work came from and it was great to see how he made his choices at different turning points along the way.  When he encountered "a problem area" that he said was going to "come back to haunt him", it was so interesting to see how he approached it.  He didn't ruminate on it, like I do.  He didn't rush in to try and "fix" it.  He worked another part of the paper and came back to it later.  He appeared to have faith that there would be a successful resolution to the "problem" area.  He took a break when he was tired which seems like a no brainer, but I often keep working, hoping to resolve some paint issue and get myself in trouble. He talked about not doing the predictable "cute" thing on the paper which is important in keeping the element of surprise and freshness in our work. I often find that my urge to create balance and harmony can create predictability and a boring end result. It was great to just see someone with years of experience at work.  You don't get this in a class, where someone is instructing and talking, not just working at their own craft.  Undoubtedly I will watch it a number of times and new things will pop out for me each time.

And what of the schedule I wrote about in early January?  Gone the way of large prehistoric creatures or tired new year's resolutions? Not really, but it has evolved.  It started with blocks of time alloted to certain activities.  It had 2 work periods and an exercise time as it's main components.   The schedule and I have adapted to each other.  I think someone in the discussion of schedules on the earlier blog post said, "it's really about intention." I think that "intention" is more like what I have ended up with than a schedule.  The schedule has I been thrown in a pot and boiled down to it's essential ingredients which seem quite tasty and nourishing and it has been energizing and rewarding for me.  It has evolved into  4 hrs of work each day (writing and/or painting).  This seems comfortable and possible.  It's the exercise that has eluded me, that requires some tweaking.  But I find I am getting more work done that I have for a long time.  It is partly the season which hold no garden work, but it is definitely the intention and the awareness of that intention that the "schedule" has given me.

So happy creating to you in this season of indoor time!  May your intentions manifest and bring you joy!