A PLACE FOR ALL

Nature sets a Place for All--
Lori Singer

Often during the holidays so many feel left out but, in nature there is a place for all... each leaf adds beauty to the whole.

If only we could all be connected with nature and see how we all have a place. I think nature speaks so beautifully in this photo. Every leaf has a place and each seem to complement the other.

FALL TIME

Wow! It's been some time since I have sat down to blog. My mind has been racing and my creative veins aching to express themselves. Autumn is always a creative time for me. It’s a time to go inside, literally and figuratively. I seem to journal more, paint more draw and cook more. I find that all that has been absorbed through life wants an outlet and so I eventually sit down and create something new.

I guess I am, in a way, doing my form of hibernation. Going inside to create. Perhaps we all need time to go inside and reflect or just shut down. I think we often don't listen to the clues our bodies and minds are telling us. I have learned to listen closer to my internal needs for more rest, and when I do, I amazingly emerge from the other side full of life and new inspiration. It is good to listen...sometimes hard to hear but so worth it.

The one thing I have noticed about fall, is that it has seasons within seasons, tucked into each season itself. As the light shifts, so does the weather and with each shift I feel a shift in my own personal energy and needs. I don't know if this is just me, but it seems so noticeable. Each has its own unique energy and sensory feeling.

Early fall or beginning is just after the kids go back to school. I noticed the shift years ago after my husband returned from Europe and we went to the beach to play. It is a time of year when the weather here in California is often at its best. We have a number of perfect coastal days and some very hot inland days.
The air is still and calm. It's hard to explain if you have not experienced it but the calmness and stillness feels like magic. I hope that you can get the chance to visit a beach in Northern California if you haven't in the fall to experience this magic. All seems right with the world. It's not unlike right the feeling just before a baby is born to this world.

I get the urge to go outside and dig in the earth. I garden until late into the evening, splitting perennials, and planting new ones. I visit all my favorite flower shops and buy new plant friends and then rush home to get them into the ground. I just can't get enough of the earth during early fall. I love to dig in the ground it is so therapeutic for me. Gardening is my meditation. It makes me happy to be connected with the earth, even if it's simply weeding.

Then comes the second part of fall right before we have our day light savings. For me, I really feel like hibernating. I need more sleep, so naps become my friend. I also get the need to see close friends and share meals. I love to cook new recipes and share them with my friends during this time. Soups on at our house just bring a good loaf of the best bread you can find. Sharing a comforting and simple meal brings great joy to me.
Sip a small glass of wine and share with special friends indoors is a must in the fall. I feel the need to be very communal. Does anyone else feel this way?

Fall is a time of great transition. The leaves fall, light shifts, days become shorter and as the weather changes from hot to cold and back again, I feel this in my own soul. It’s a fickle time of year in California. One day its hot and the next cold. I feel fickle too, I range from being very energized and wanting to seize the day to the need to hibernate and take those needed naps. It seems to require more energy to do things in the fall and because this I like to protect my self in the fall and spare my energy. I try not to spend much time with things and people who are energy drains. I don't have the same tolerance than Iwould in say spring or Summer. Is it the interal hibernation clock? Who knows? I do think the season says, slow down and it is more organically closed than other times of the years. So I also find myself doing the same as nature.

Another aspect of fall is harvest time. Time to harvest ideas and create. Fall is time to do nothing. Fall is time to share. Share and perhaps let go. A good time to clean house, it's an organic time of renewal and introversion. Shed the unwanted and move on. Who needs the extra baggage as the weather chills.

This all happens just in time for Halloween. Halloween often marks the first colder nights here in California and the days begin to gradually darken and become cooler.

(Continued) Part 1

DO You Wanna Play??? Is Art is a scary Word?

Lets Play.  Lets do art for arts sake!  Lets forget the rules and explore where we can go with play.

If Art seems scary because you forgot how to play then  its time to break out the box and see what's inside.   Its through play that we find new things and those things that seemed scary slowly fade away.  So take off your thinking cap and just explore with your hands what you have forgotten.

I hope that we have all played at some point in our lives before the teachers, parent or other serious beings  voice encamped your brain and you no longer could PLAY!   Fear not if you feel you never got to play not all is lost and it is most definitely never too late, maybe a bit more awkward or a bit fumbly, but not too late and I guarantee once you take off your but "I Should Hat" you will enjoy playing.  

Begin by opening your arms wide and leap into play with not expectations.  We are not creating for someone, or creating something even though it might end up for someone or a really cool something.  The purpose is just to explore and play.  

Some rules to play 

1.   MORE THAN ONE SHEET OF PAPER  is allowed and highly recommended, if any of you had teachers and art projects were scarcity was involved time to let it go!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Art for art sake is not a place to be scarce.

2.  MAKE MANY MISTAKES  this is a place to make so-called mistakes and make them into something new, see were they can take you, and if you must call them mistakes listen to what the mistakes are telling you about your self and  your play.  maybe your "I should hat is still on"  There is always a place to learn

3.  Take breaks  make sure you walk away from you play and come back and revisit if and look at it from a different view

4. Have fun!

5.  Open your heart!  It never lies.  THis is why opening your arms wide helps it opens the center the heart charkra.  Could be why hugs feel so good.  We open and then embrace or massage the center the heart.  

More to follow

Me and My Girl

Me and my girl, my love, my light, my inspiration for being a better person, artist and my gosh so much more, but then there are those moments when you just have to walk away as a parent and collect yourself for a moment.

When my girl was little I bought my first two huge blank and at the time intimidating canvases. Well I guess, she decided to make my work a bit easier. She was by no means afraid of the large blank canvas and was excited to get on with the art. She got a hold of a pencil and drew all over my second canvas, my art mommy...see.

Yes, Mom was not too happy. They were my canvases. Mine! Well, after I cooled down I looked at the beautiful lines she had so innocently created, I could not paint over them and so they sat on the white canvas for some time actually a few years until I decided what to do.

I know that many would call the lines scribble but I saw the art and beauty in the simple drawings. The primitive beginnings of my girl's lines. I decided to honor my daughters attempt to create her own first large scale canvas even though it was not planned to be hers.

The lines sat alone on the large canvas with no color forgotten in a pile of other artwork until my son began Kindergarten. The kids often see me paint and are always asking when we can paint together, so the idea was born. Since my kids are close in age it had been rare to get that one on one girl time and so I decided we could paint together. We decided to make her canvas a joint effort since after all it was my canvas and so we sat down one beautiful day and created this canvas together. We chose colors we both enjoy and had a fun time, we were both in the moment together. It was special because it is usually the three of us and Mary got mom all to herself with a huge canvas to prove that we spent quality time together. We had just enough time to finish and then before you new it was time to pick Jack up. What a wonderful memory for the two of us and a cool piece of art to display that has lots of meaning for the two of us girlie's.
I am so grateful to have my daughters first attempts of people preserved on a canvas. Those primitive lines, that freedom that many try to capture as artist, but are not free enough to do so. The beauty in the untrained art is something many artists take years to acquire. As an artist it is so pleasing to see freedom and uninhibited lines in the work of those who create from a knowing place.

I hope you all get a chance to create art that is you, dig deep and find the place that lives inside each of us, that place that has something to say or share. Don't try to make a finished project, just give yourself the freedom to explore the canvas as you would a newfound town in a foreign country. Explore! Choose new colors, lines and shapes. Try not to expect it to be anything familiar, but do take the time to enjoy it as it is and for what it is. If you have small children and are afraid of the mess I challenge you let go of it and just paint. Painting is not supposed to be clean. Creativity can be very messy. Explore and let go!

Happy Creating!
Happy Painting!

"All Hearts" My first Canvas and attempt at Acrylic Paint

September 5, 2008

 

"All Hearts" is a painting that is very personal to me on many levels of which I won't go into great detail.  

We all have times in our lives where things are not going as planned and we seem stuck, so why not paint a huge heart to help move the blockage and create something new, that's exactly what I did and I hung it in a place that would greet my family and me every day.  It served as a reminder for me each time I passed and helped me open and learn.   

This heart was born out of one of my late night inspirational meditations around the healing and growth, in which my family needed and so I included them in it as well.  My heart painting has been predominately displayed in our home since I painted many years ago when the kids were still in preschool.  

Hearts are personal on many levels to my family and me.  My own dad often bought sweet jewelry out of hearts or red jewels for my mother throughout their relationship and when I met Michael, we somehow began our own tradition, which included jewelry with hearts and red stones.  Michael has purchased me many things that have symbolic red and white jewels, and or a tiny heart display and often circles representing the constant change we go through and the union we have created our circle of our commitment to each other.  My first wedding ring has two tiny ruby hearts on both sides.  The first ring Michael ever bought me was circle of teeny diamond chips and a row of tiny red jewel that intercepted it.  Nothing big in value but deep in meaning for the both of us.  

Writing this got me on a thought wave about the importance of creativity and how it can be a catalyst of change in ones life.  I was looking up the meaning of creativity and pulled up a few definitions.  I find it amusing that Art and many Art forms are deemed extra curricular still today.  I just think it is such an outdated view of what Art is and can do. Here are a few definitions of the meaning creative and creating.  Think about the skill that they can teach. We are not talking about filling in bubbles here or busy work even though Art is often categorized as not a necessity.  Art has the power to do so much and even if we take it for just extra curricular activity and not see its full value of creating citizens whom can think, what about citizens whom can feel good about something that they take pride in and enjoy.  Well, here are the few definitions.  Think about them and think about were they can be useful.

A few definitions of creative:

-- having the ability or power to create; "a creative imagination"

-- promoting construction or creation; "creative work"

 creating:  having the ability or power to create: "a creative  imagination"

creating:  action of the verb to create

-- can the student create new product or point of view?

assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write    

-- generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things (designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing)

So back to my canvas, "All Hearts," which is the real title of the painting. 

This is a canvas, my first canvas that I did not plan on purchasing, it was actually purchased while I was on a shopping spree for the Coop nursery school my kids attended.  I came home with two huge intimidating blank canvases.   Late one night, (I do a lot of 11 p.m. or latter inspiration paintings) I asked my husband what should I paint and he said paint me a big heart, so I did and this was the result.    

It was not only healing it was truly creating a new and better pathway for the things in my life that were stuck.  Painting it helped me open and grow in ways I would only explain to my most intimate friends, but I do want to share this with you because the act of painting and or attempting Art the art form many school budgets have cut, and people belittle as being a craft or hobby has the ability in its pure form to be full of unbelievable teachable moments.  

The definition of creative is everything one needs to be super successful, and yet it is so under funded and undervalued.  The old saying, "Teach a man to fish..."   "Well I say teach them Art".  Teach the kids to think, explore, make many mistakes, correct them, rework, fail, yes fail and learn from the failures, and then go back and redesign.  Do Art. Create.... not the kind that you fill in the lines, although that has its purpose for assessment and such, I mean create.  Give permission to brainstorm and who cares what it is or looks like, permission to make one thousand mistakes and move beyond the mistakes.  Permission to open your arms wide and just let go.  This doesn't happen everyday.

"All Hearts" is about being open and letting go of the outdated and being wide open for hurt, pain and whatever awaits.  Letting the love and creative force in. 

I want everyone to feel as though they can paint their own heart or even tell your story and have someone paint it for you to display in your home.  I would gladly make a commissioned one especially for you if you choose, but I would hope that if painting is not your thing that you find a place to create your own Art.  It doesn't matter if it's Physical Art, theater, music, dance etc.  Find something that you do and enjoy the process and see were it takes you.

Open your heart to your Art!

What's your favorite color????

 Oh to be a kid again!  NO Way!  

Those simple questions like:  "What's your favorite Color?" were humiliating for the terribly shy, overly polite and artistic kid that I was.   

My response to "What's your favorite Color?" was always the rainbow.  If I really wanted to try to conform, I would break it down to two or three colors but even that felt awkward, it wasn't my truth.  Well as I grew I became aware that others really did only have one favorite color and this cause inner turmoil for the rainbow girl.  

Now as a mother and art educator I am quickly to say its OK to love all the colors...I do, but today maybe we can pick the color your most drawn too or in the mood for on a given day.  I give each and everyone that OK to love the rainbow.  I DO.... and it shows in my work.  I still find it hard to express the exact color I want.  Color is not an easy thing and should you find it difficult to tell what your favorite color is well that's because you are smart and realize color changes and even a simple color like white has thousands and thousands of hues.  I also believe we change and our colors we are drawn to change depending on were we are at in our lives.  

Does anyone else feel this way about color? Do you think about color?  Are you drawn to certain colors?  Color is such a personal thing.  

I once bought an blanket from Ikea that was a beautiful red and it had a modern design with black circles...well I normally love this hue but when I got it home and put it in the room it was supposed to live in it make me feel very uncomfortable.  The modern black circles became target rings and it was very bothersome, it by the way went back to the store in a very prompt fashion.  So, there you have it color depends on so much: light, mood, space, experience, individual and so on. We all experience it differently!

I would love to hear about your views and experience with the wonderful world of color. By the way, I am no longer embarrassed about my color choices and they change often.  

Happy Rainbow!!

 

Enter Dog to the Family Mix

September 4, 2008

Well, we have an unexpected  new member to add to the family mix.  Michael and I were just saying the day before while speaking in the garden, I miss having little something at our feet and bammoo.  I was thinking maybe a garden cat or tiny something but I guess there was a tiny little rescue waiting for us in the wings.  

  The very next day I got a phone call that a sweet dog need a home and or would be returned to the shelter within two hours.  Well, watch out for what you wish for or at least wish good!!   I certainly have something at my feet and I mean all day and night if I would let him. 

 Our new friend is now named Pumpkin!  For Joy P, (he's our cutey Pie).  He is a medium sized Pom that has been shaved.  I actually really love his hair cut and might give him one each summer to stay cool, clean and in our big yard foxtail and critter free.

 Last christmas the only thing the kids really wanted was a dog, but we just weren't ready for the responsiblility and being tied down to a dog.  Thinking we would get a puppy and a big golden or chocolate lab I dreaded the thought of the puppy stage.  We decided to wait until Jack was in third grade since that was so far away and yes a week after her starts here is the doggie dropped from the serindipitous skys above.  

Well, it was a great surprise for us all and a perfect fit for our first pup.  We are enjoying our pumpkin thoroughly.  He is very mild mannered and perfectly trained, so we actually somehow skirted around all the training issues and when we are ready for the big guy for the back we will be prepared.

Its funny how quick these little guys get under your skin....or in my case under foot!--smile