Would Love Kick Your Butt?

It's nice to think that when you've lost your way in your excuses and avoidance, that Something will come and smack you up the side of the head and set you straight! Thanks to Message from the Muse, here, for posting this poem.

All right Love, gimme some tough love!!

Tired of Speaking Sweetly
©Hafiz, via Daniel Ladinsky

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
he would just drag you around the room
by your hair,
ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
that bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
and wants to rip to shreds
all your erroneous notions of truth
that make you fight within yourself, dear one,
and with others,
causing the world to weep
on too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
and practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
to do us a great favor:
hold us upside down
and shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
most everyone I know
quickly packs their bags and hightails it
out of town.

Great Giveaway from Lovely Colorado Artist!

You'll want to check out these 2 uplifting retreats super collage artist KC Willis is offering at her Longmont, Colorado, studio next year! One is called Colorado Collage and features guest instructors as well as the inspirational KC! The other is called Imagination Congregation and is focused on making Christian art that will stand up and shout your faith!



Read all about these exciting opportunities to be inspired and find your inner artist on KC Willis' blog!



If you love vintage, you love paper, you love collage and western themes, and you love the cameraderie and inspiration of being with spirited women for an artmaking, soul-feeding, fabulous five days, hurry on over here and find out more from the links to these two great retreats (and guess what! Both are offered twice next year - so you'll have more opportunity to attend!)



Plus, KC and the visiting artists are offering an amazing goodie box for helping to spread the word! So check out KC's blog and the retreats and the fun and amazing art of KC Willis! (And learn how you, too, could be eligible for this great giveaway goodie box!

What I Learned from Seeing Artists at Work

Do you want to make more art?

What I've learned from visiting artists' studios this past weekend is that it really helps to see and hear the artist's process.

I've taken loads of classes and workshops, most of which are designed to give you a controlled art making experience. You're guided in a step by step process to success, with all the kinks ironed out.

Then you start out on your own, and WHOOOAAH! things don't run that smoothly. You may start to doubt yourself. And if you want to try something different, your self doubt can keep you in 'known' territory.

But visit some artists in their studios and you'll see just how gnarly the creative process can be. You'll see that it's messy (no, you're not the only one); it's filled with experimentation; flops; trial and error and, if you're persistant, success.

Look around a studio and you'll see beginnings of all kinds of projects. Talk with an artist in their working space and you'll hear about how many times they had to rework something to get it to turn out the way they wanted.

Yes, being an artist is about having ideas and making connections. It's about playing with materials and having fun. It's also about sticking with an idea through all of it's phases, including finding out what you tried just won't work, trying something else, learning a new technique, and voila! often many steps and missteps later, a finished show-ready piece emerges!

So go to your studio and make stuff and stick with it!

Learning to Play

Last spring I wrote about perfectionism here. My Little Miss Perfect was in full swing when I came home from Texas and amassed lots of supplies and books to help me learn about and improve in working with pastels. Trouble was, I hated making drawings of outdoor scenes and still lifes. I am able to make things look 'real' but I don't like the process. I get all tight and anxious about the finished piece. It's not much fun for me. But I tell myself that's what I'm 'sposed' to do.

So here I was, with all these new supplies, and I wasn't using them. As you might imagine, the guilt set in. I longed to loosen up with the pastels, but whenever I stared at that big sheet of paper, I felt like I had to make some 'real' art. Then a couple of experiences allowed me to find a new way. I hope my learning might help you, too, if you're faced with perfectionism.

Recently, I spent a fun and inspirational afternoon taking an Artist Journal workshop with Fran Meneley in Longmont. Although I'd done some collage, written a journal off and on for years, and done some sketching of ideas in my journals, this was my first attempt at the 'artist' journal.

It was intriguing and puzzling. Was it 'supposed to' be pretty, personal, artsy or raw? What's my style? Well, as I relaxed into making pages over the next few weeks, I realized it was all those things. Although I tend to value the raw over the pretty. Pretty gets my perfectionist thang going.

Last weekend I attended Boulder's Open Studios tour. One of my favorites was Caroline Douglas, a clay artist with a wonderful imagination. She had several small watercolor and pastel working sketches in her studio that reflected the way I long to play with pastels. I want to make imaginary pictures. Caroline's work showed me the way.

So last night I brought a box of pastels up to my art journaling area in an annex of our kitchen, and I restored my relationship with my pastels! How great to use them in my art journal, where pages are smaller and less 'special' than my pastel paper, so I feel free to experiment!

It can be really tough to let ourselves play. Lots of expectations can trap us. I'm grateful for playful artists like Caroline and Fran, who have shown me the way and helped me give myself permission to have fun. If you're stuck in the perfectionism rut, find a mentor of play, a queen or king of fun, and learn how you can let yourself go. You'll be glad you did!

Photos of the Day

Taken in Rocky Mountain National Park, Wild Basin area, along the St. Vrain River, on Saturday, September 11, 2010.

A Part of Me Is...

Often I have the experience of feeling painfully awash with fear or worry or procrastination, so that I can't really 'see' anything else in life. I am finding that there IS a way to take tiny steps toward freedom and spaciousness, even in the midst of overwhelming emotions.

In my last post, I wrote about Ann Weisser Cornell's teaching on Focusing. A major learning I'm implementing from Cornell's book The Power of Focusing, is a phrase that helps me remember that not ALL of me is involved in whatever emotion may be distressing me at the moment.

One of the things that often happens to me is that I plan the night before to spend time making art the next day. However, next day, I may procrastinate and start criticizing myself for not working on any art projects.

When I remember to say, "'A part of me' does not want to make art today," it does two things for me. First, I can acknowledge that some energy, maybe resistance, or another commitment, is pulling me away from my artmaking. When I recognize the resistance, it can relax - it is being heard. It's still there, but the pull is not so strong.

Second, it is very important for me to recognize that this feeling is a 'part' of me, not all encompassing. Whew! This leaves room for so much possibility! Particularly:

• It frees me to become aware of my Higher Self - that spacious place of inner peace that is connected to the All
• There is room for other points of view, within me or outside of me, that have a different perspective on my dilemma, and
• It frees me to live in the moment, to enjoy the sunlight on my worktable, to appreciate my dog's easy presence, without being immersed in my overwhelming angst

Helene Brenner, in I Know I'm in There Somewhere, writes:

"Your Larger Self is bigger than all of your thoughts, feelings and life problems. Whenever you forget this and make something or someone else bigger than You are, you are out of touch with your Larger Self."

This Larger Self is is so much more than your thoughts and feelings. It is not necessarily God or a Higher Power, but is the wise inner knowing that whispers truth and freedom and compassion. How easily I can drown that voice, lose touch with it, by listening only to my problem.

My journey is, each time I find myself immersed in the experience of berating myself for not making art and buying yet more supplies, to repeat the mantra - "A Part of Me is feeling ashamed now." "A Part of Me is scared." "A Part of Me is upset."

Ahhh, then I have some room to breathe. Wishing you the same.

A Fresh New Start

As of this week, I am officially re-focusing on my life as an artist! Making art and 'things' is my first and deepest love, and I'm excited to be moving in this direction!

I'm reading a book called I Know I'm in There Somewhere: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner Voice and Living a Life of Authenticity by Helene G. Brenner, Ph. D. Brenner speaks to me so deeply. I've felt for most of my life, since jr. high, that I lost my voice. Reassuringly, it isn't lost, I just haven't attended to it. Brenner has many exercises in the book to recover one's capacity to 'hear' your voice.

Additionally, as a coach, I trained with Marlena Fields, who teaches bodymindspirit awareness, based on Hakomi psychotherapy, a body based therapy. In Marlena's class, I met a friend who has shared some focusing techniques with me, this based on the work of Eugene Gendlin and Ann Weiser Cornell, and teaches one to learn to read felt body sensations.

I mention all this as it is a significant part of my journey, and is helping me to let go of feeling that making art is just a self-serving activity, something not as important as coaching or working as an occupational therapist.

I am embracing the joy I feel when I play around with fabric, thread, stitiching, paints and natural dyes!

I've written a vision statement, and here it is:

My vision is to bring more creativity, joy, imagination and wonder into the world through the making and sharing of my art.

I'll be using my blog to give a running commentary on my process, learnings, experiments and healing. Indeed, it has been very healing already to make this commitment to the one thing in life that makes me so happy.