anonyrrie

Wide-Eyed

journal page - 5/17/08

...a quick break from big paintings to do another journal page. This one was inspired by Illustration Friday's topic "wide," and Inspire Me Thursday's challenge to use crayons to make art. I made this with acrylics, Caran d'Ache Neocolor II artist's crayons, and ink. And... two finished paintings.. finally!

Flora - 24" x 36" x 1.5" - acrylic & ink on wood panel

Vernal Spirit- 18" x 24" x 1" - acrylic & ink on wood panel

It's all I have to bring today –
This, and my heart beside –
This, and my heart, and all the fields –
And all the meadows wide –
Be sure you count – should I forget
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

- Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

Well, I also have great news! I am excited to announce an interview at my Wings 4 You Coaching blog with Susan Tuttle in celebration of her new book, Exhibition 36: A Gallery of Mixed-Media Inspiration . I am honored to have contributed a painting and article to her book, available for preorder prior to its release in November 2008. Please stop by and read about Susan's inspiring creative journey!

To wrinkle... or not

journal page - 4/26/08

Within Us #6

From the wrinkle between my brows
You watch till day breaks
On my face

The waxen night
Is beginning to singe
The fingers of dawn

Black bricks
Have already tiled
The whole dome of the sky

- Vasko Popa (1922 - 1991)

After a long, delightful, but sometimes stressful week, I am almost finished with a painting I started weeks and weeks ago. I took a break from the big work this afternoon to paint a bit in my journal, hoping I would end up with something I could post for this week's Illustration Friday topic - wrinkles. I don't have much to say about wrinkles... I have a few I call dear friends and some I wish would disappear... but like everything else I have collected along the way, they are markers of where and who I've been. Even so, all that came to mind was the seemingly constant warning I got from my grandmother when I was a child - don't frown; you'll get wrinkles! It must have made quite an (ahem) impression on me, because to this day, I really do avoid frowning as much as possible! Somehow I got it fixed in my head that if I frowned or scowled too often, my face would freeze in that expression. So, I looked for inspiration elsewhere, and went with a wrinkle-free interpretation.

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew! - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

P.S. -  Please accept my invitation to stop by Wings 4 You Coaching and participate in my Weekly Wings challenges.  There's a new challenge posted each Sunday.  I'd love to have you along on the journey!

Love Your Mother

journal page - 4/20/08

Earth Day is a reminder of how important it is to love our Mother Earth every day, and this very primitive little doodle from my journal is in honor of her special day. I have been working, working, and working on some large paintings for a show in June, but when I need a break, I recycle some runny paints from my palette in my journal and play a bit... and with the warm weather, sunny skies, chirping birds, and blooming spring flowers as inspiration, today this is what I got!

Next Time

Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.

When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.

And for all, I'd know more -- the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.

- Mary Oliver (1935 - )

P.S. -  Please accept my invitation to stop by Wings 4 You Coaching and participate in my Weekly Wings challenges.  There's a new challenge posted each Sunday.  I'd love to have you along on the journey!

Flower Power

journal page - 4/4/08

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people. - Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964)

When I saw the topics for Inspire Me Thursday (the peace sign) and Illustration Friday (save), the first thing that came to mind was an illustration and post about how peace can save the world. And it's true... until we can find peace - within ourselves, our societies, and among nations - we will live in a constant state of strife and destruction. But as I started thinking about what I would write, all that came forth was that peace must originate from the individual. There are innumerable things each person can do to promote peace, starting from within... for a person who has inner peace will not make war with another.

Hug o' War

I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

- Shel Silverstein (1930 - 1999)

This journal page is inspired by peace signs and flower power... and my true desire to wish all of you peace, love, and happiness!

_______________________________________________________________________

P.S. -  Please accept my invitation to stop by Wings 4 You Coaching and participate in my Weekly Wings challenges.  There's a new challenge posted each Sunday.  I'd love to have you along on the journey!

Touches of Green and Gold

journal page - 3/22/08

Spring officially arrived in New England on Friday, and already Nature has begun to wallpaper the land with touches of green and gold. With the sun shining and the birds visiting the feeder outside my kitchen window,   it's hard to think of having any peeves.  All I feel is a wonderful whisper of promise in the air.  I have learned over time how much better my experience of the world is when I let go of the things that annoy me... and concentrate on the things that delight me.  Today, I am delighted to just be... here, in the moment.  Tomorrow I will go back to pondering the unknown fields before me.  Happy Spring, my friends!

First Georgic

When spring begins and the ice-locked streams begin
To flow down from the snowy hills above
And the clods begin to crumble in the breeze,
The time has come for my groaning ox to drag
My heavy plow across the fields, so that
The plow blade shines as the furrow rubs against it.

Not till the earth has been twice plowed, so twice
Exposed to sun and twice to coolness will
It yield what the farmer prays for; then will the barn
Be full to bursting with the gathered grain.

And yet if the field's unknown and new to us,
Before our plow breaks open the soil at all,
It's necessary to study the ways of the winds
And the changing ways of the skies, and also to know
The history of the planting in that ground,
What crops will prosper there and what will not.

In one place grain grows best, in another, vines;
Another's good for the cultivation of trees;
In still another the grain turns green unbidden.

- Virgil, translated by David Ferry

P.S. -  Please accept my invitation to stop by Wings 4 You Coaching and participate in my Weekly Wings challenges.  There's a new challenge posted each Sunday.  I'd love to have you along on the journey!

Lifting off into Flight

journal page - 3/16/08

I am deeply touched by the affirmation of possibility and rebirth this poem expresses through the imagery of the heavy-bodied heron lifting off into flight.

Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond

So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself--
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

- Mary Oliver (1935 - )

Lift off into your own flight! Please accept my invitation to stop by Wings 4 You Coaching and participate in my Weekly Wings challenges. I'd love to have you along on the journey!

Planting & Growing

Vernal Spirit - 18" x 24" x 1" - acrylic & ink on wood

This painting is not completely finished (It's based on an earlier journal page, and I need to do more work on the hair detail), but I wanted to share it for both Inspire Me Thursday's "Kitchen" topic and Illustration Friday's "Garden" topic.

The background has at least eight layers, several of which are built with washes of paint that I sprinkled with salt. This is a great technique for creating pattern and texture. When the salt dries, I rub it off to find the small dots and stars that are left where the salt has lifted the paint. This method works really well if you build several very thin glaze layers - in person, the background of this painting has such beautiful depth and texture.

The garden connection is both visual and conceptual. For a long time, I have been focusing on making positive changes in my life that will give me space to express myself more genuinely. That means aligning my life with my most important values - individuality, creativity, family, learning, and sharing. I think of these values as the seeds I must plant to grow my own beautiful life-garden... and so, I am currently in the process of becoming a certified life coach.

I have always been a believer in big dreams, and I love working with people to help them find constructive and viable ways to create a vision and then turn it into reality. I've been doing this for almost 24 years as a teacher, and now I want to share my passion outside a school setting. I have recently launched a blog where I offer motivational articles and weekly challenges, and within the next few months, I will be offering personal, creativity, and career coaching, tele-seminars and live workshops.

Please accept my invitation to stop by Wings 4 You Coaching and participate in my Weekly Wings challenges. I'd love to have you along on the journey!

Background Check

untitled work-in-progress - 24" x 36 ' x 1.5" - acrylic on wood

When I saw that the topics this week over at Inspire Me Thursday (Action Painting) and Illustration Friday (Multiple), my immediate thought was to bring both topics together and share a little bit of the process behind my paintings.

journal page - 2/1/08

Most of my paintings are conceived in a small 5" x 7" journal, the place where I go to play without the big elephant of artistic performance anxiety sitting on my chest. Although I rarely have any idea what I want a page to look like, I always start off with brushed, smeared or sponged-on leftover paint, experimenting with color combinations and application processes. As the background takes on a personality, I start getting an idea of what I want to do - perhaps add paper elements, drip some ink, paint a figure, stamp in texture, draw with pens, scribble with crayons. Sometimes I finish a page rather quickly, and other times I keep layering on the elements until the original background is pretty much obliterated. It starts out as an active, intuitive process that becomes more and more focused as I see what's appearing on the page. If it really speaks to me as the journal page above did, I decide to go forward and recreate the page as a larger painting.

Like my journal pages, I build my paintings from the background forward. The large painting at the top began as a wood panel my DH made for me a while back. After applying the gesso and sanding it smooth, I used my favorite Blick's mega-brush to paint a base layer of cadmium red and quinacridone crimson. I let it dry completely, and then used a fabric paint roller to randomly apply diarylide yellow, cadmuim yellow medium, and titan buff paint over the red. Between "rolls," I spritzed the surface with water and blotted with a paper towel. When I had added and subtracted paint until I had a nice balance of yellow and red, I spritzed again, sprinkled salt on the surface and dried it with a heat gun. Finally, I rubbed off the salt to see the little dots and star designs it left behind, and finished the background by using a texture stamp here and there.

Creating the background was a very active and loose process, in contrast to the very deliberate and focused work I did on the figure. The final stage of this painting will be to add the details – the floral designs, and patterns in her hair, and whatever little surprise elements I might think of before I feel it's done. I find that I lose my concentration after several hours, so a painting this size ends up taking a long time to finish! In fact, I am going to put her aside for a while and start the background for another painting.

journal page - 12/20/07 & Spirit- 18" x 24" x 1" - mixed media on wood

Above is another example of page-to-painting. In this case, the backgrounds began with collaged torn paper. Below are two other page-to-painting images that I have already posted individually.

journal page - 9/9/07 & Migration- 12" x 16" x 1" - acrylic/mixed media on wood

journal page - 10/10/07 & Enchantment - 12" x 16" x 1" - acrylic/mixed media on wood

More Action Painting here... and more Multiple(s) here... Enjoy!

A Theory of Illusion

journal page - 2/18/08 We see things not as they are, but as we are. - Anais Nin

How to See Deer

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

- Phillip Booth (1925 - 2007)

Space to Choose, Room to Grow

journal page - 2/11/08

Every year about this time, I begin to sense a lightening of spirit as I anticipate Spring. The days are noticeably longer, and although it's bitterly cold in New England, the slant of light mitigates the discomfort of wind chill factors and icy roads. It becomes easy to imagine the return of green, and I feel the urge to clean my inner house, sweeping out stale ideas and behaviors to renew and redefine my goals, as if the Vernal Equinox were my New Year's Day.

Just as it takes energy and the right combination of elements to coax the buds back from their winter's sleep, it takes energy and nurturing to foster personal growth. Yet often we find ourselves up against a variety of obstacles that keep us from steadily moving forward, much like rush hour traffic on a highway with a closed lane. We've all experienced that feeling of trying to get quickly from one place to another, but having to constantly put on the brakes and slow down to a crawl every few yards. We get edgy, we feel irritable; we may even lose our temper. And how does it feel by the time we finally reach our destination? Does it ever seem as if it weren't worth the trouble of the trip? The same idea applies to the tolerations in our lives that function as speed bumps on our own personal highways.

Although we often associate the development of tolerance as a behavior with positive attributes such as patience, acceptance of others' differences, and selflessness, it can also become an insidious drain on our time, energy, and spirit. Think of all the things we "put up with" in the course of a day, things that annoy or anger us, things that divert our attention away from what we want to do, things that cause us to react in ways that are contrary to how we would like to see ourselves. Each of these tolerations in some way prevents us from moving forward, ultimately leaving us feeling depleted.

According to Thomas J.Leonard, a pioneer in the life coaching profession, there are logical reasons why we accept tolerations in our lives. Perhaps we've been raised to practice the virtue of selfless patience so we can get along with others. While that is often a necessary skill for peaceful social interactions, what does it mean when we are doing no more than allowing others to take advantage of our "good nature"? What we've been taught to view as a commendable quality actually puts us in the position of feeling anger and resentment, two emotions that tremendously sap our energy. Perhaps we're afraid of the consequences we imagine will result if we eliminate negative behaviors and relationships, or take a stand to self-advocate and say "no." We feel safer with what we know - even if it's dragging us down - and ultimately we become mired in stagnation.

This year, my "spring cleaning" will be to identify and eliminate those things I tolerate that are really no more than speed bumps on my journey. I'll start small with things I can easily tackle, clearing the decks for the bigger things that require more work. I want to give myself more space to choose, more room to grow. Anyone care to join me? You can start by making a list of ten or more things that consistently bother you, or you might want to start by looking at Thomas Leonard's list of The Top 10 Tolerations that People Put Up With as Normal/Acceptable to see if any of them sound familiar. And feel free to share what you come up with, if you'd like!