Tales for Paloma

Traveling and Sketching in Italy

Everyone has a secret dream of mastering a certain skill which has so far eluded them.  Mine is being able to casually sketch everyone at a sidewalk cafe in Italy while simultaneously drinking a cappucino.  So far I pretty much suck at it but where there is life there is hope, yes?   This is my travelling sketching kit!  Very compressed:  a smallish watercolor notebook (5"x8") by Moleskin, a box of 12 Inktense pencils, a small Sennelier watercolor box with 14 colors, a small pouch holding my Japanese water brushes (the handles are hollow and you put water in them for ultra light travel sketching), and a larger pouch that contains more tools such as a pencil sharpener, eraser, pencil, compass, and a small plastic palette.  The pencil is in the photo to indicate scale.

Even though my watercolor set has a built-in palette, it is very useful to have another small palette for mixing colors, which is one of the funnest aspects of sketching with watercolors.  In fact, I could just mix and invent new colors all day without ever sketching anything!

I took Inktense pencils this time but often I take watercolor pencils.  The little scrap of sponge on the right is very handy for creating "vegetation".  You just wet it with water and dab it into the paint on your palette and then dab it into your sketch.  And then don't mess with it.  Messing with it too much will result in blobs rather than light dabs which the human eye mistakes for leaves, bushes, and trees.

Above you see tools from my larger pouch.  These I use when I want to draw a mandala "on the road."  The blue tool on the left is my battery operated eraser.  The plastic stencil is helpful for drawing straight lines and for adding consistently sized motifs to the mandala.  The five black ink drawing pens are handy for sketching and for outlining.  The compass is great for making circles but must be packed into your checked baggage or you will lose it to the security people!

These are the two journals I took with me.  The larger journal is one I made out of a composition book and has a scene from my studio on the cover.  It's the one I use for my daily writing.  The smaller one is a book of floral postcards.  I used the backs of the postcards, which feature beautiful floral designs by the English designers Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell, to record our daily progress through Italy.  The postcards will become part of a bigger book about our trip.  They may end up stuck in pockets on each page or used in some other way.  It is a tiny journal measuring 5"x4":

Because we made our trip in the spring, I thought all the floral designs would be a cool aspect of the larger book I will make.  I have to give some further thought as to how I will use them.

I was staying here, at Villa Lecchi, when I did most of my sketching....a casual term for something that actually requires a lot of looking, seeing, and thought. Moi, I just keep bumbling along and learning as I go.  Sometimes I sketch what I am looking at and sometimes I just make designs or page headings for my other books.  Either way it is fun and relaxing.

Here are some of my fledgling efforts from the trip:

The one above I did sitting on the balcony to our room at Villa Lecchi.  These flowers,of course, do not grow in real life. When I am too tired to observe carefully and record what I see, I just draw stuff from the inside of my head.  It's busy in there.

This one was done at a sidewalk cafe in Assisi to acknowledge St. Francis and St. Clare:

The view from the terrace at Villa Lecchi was amazing, so one day I sat out there for nearly the whole day trying to sketch it:

And here is my sketch, which is, as sketchers say, pretty "tight" but it's a learning curve to make your sketches look alive and juicy.....something I have to work on!

One day at the villa I realized I was just plumb worn out so I stayed behind while everyone else went into Florence.  I pretended I was a 19th century heroine in a Jane Austen novel who had fled to Tuscany to escape the amorous attentions of John Keats, who was back in London writing a poem about me.

And then, there is Mr. Bill, my real life John Keats, who was not back in London but actually on the trip--even better!  So I made a page header for him:

It was so much fun being able to experiment with my three years of college Italian again.  I say "experiment" because when I try to speak Italian it is always an experiment.  (Inspite of having lived in Trieste for a year when I was young.)

Every day at Villa Lecchi was, in fact, "meravigliosa!"  It was one of the most enchanting places I have ever visited.  I loved the quiet, serene evenings with all the larks darting here and there, catching bugs for their babies.

Now if I was an accomplished sketcher I would have drawn this goddess, who dropped in for a swim.  Maybe next year.

After the larks disappeared for the night, we could hear the owls begin to call across the valley to each other.  So quiet.  So timeless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Palette of Gorgeous Colors

It's so much fun going into new environments and discovering new palettes of color combinations!  Last week--was it just last week?--Mr. Bill and I made a day trip out to the island of Burano near Venice.  Most people are familiar with the island of Murano, where some of the greatest glass blowers in the world work and live, but Burano, home to handmade lace makers, is not so well known.  It is a much smaller island than Murano, and for some reason, has a totally different look from either Murano or Venice.  The palette of Venice is soft, dignified, and stately.  There are no hard edges, no clashing disharmonies.

Beautiful rosy pinks next to soft, muted ochres and greys.

As we walked the streets of Venice, my fingers were itching to begin experiementing with my watercolors to see if I could mix the palette of soft romantic colors on the buildings around us.  The palette of Venice is pastel, soft, quiet, and very romantic.  In fact, Venice is a valentine, and these colors would make incredible valentines to send next February...I hope I don't forget that idea between now and then.

Even the bright blue covers on the gondolas do not disrupt the quiet romanaticism of Venice:

On the island of Burano,however, the houses seem to sing with bold, brash, fully saturated colors.  As I learned in India watching the beautiful saris on the women there, no color combinations are impossible or inappropriate.  With the right attitude, all colors go together....and Burano has attitude!  Here is some maroon, salmon pink, and bright blue served up together:

Now how about lavendar, taupe, chestnut brown, bright blue, and seafoam green?  (This is just the antipasti.)

Moving along into the prima piatti, we have rowhouses, and of course each one will be a different color!

But wait--there's more, and it gets better!

Deeply saturated ultramarine blue, pale gold, greenish ochre, hot salmon pink, and reddish rust--these little houses could be our seconda piatti, our main course.  They seem to say:  "Hey!  We're here!  We're small, but with a big attitude!"

And now for my favorites:  a blue house with creamy caramel shutters....

and a lavendar house with a big gold sheet hanging from the second story balcony!

Needless to say, it is impossible not to feel pretty cheerful on Burano.  The fact that they make the best hazelnut gelato doesn't hurt either!  The opportunity to watch a 77 year old woman make lace by hand--definitely a dying art--was a wonderful treat for a textile enthusiast like me.  (Of course, I had to bring a couple pieces of it home.) I am looking forward to making a color chart for Venice and one for Burano.  Perhaps a mandala for each palette?   Venice for valentines and Burano for birthdays and other ebullient occasions, like the day you get a new puppy.

 

 

 

 

 

Experience to Image

How do images come to us?  Why do certain images appear at certain times in our dreams or in our art-making?  How do we translate our experiences into images which somehow capture not only some aspect of an experience but also our feeling-relatedness to it?  These are not questions which I usually dwell on too much, as I have developed the habit of simply expressing my inner images through art-making and then gradually coming to an understanding of them as I live with them over time.

However, travelling in Italy for three weeks from the very tip of the boot clear up to Venice impressed on me all that we owe to earlier western civilizations, especially to the Greeks and the Romans from whom we have inherited many political ideas, governing organization, mechanical engineering insights, and great artistic and philosophical insights.  In the Vatican museum, I stood in front of a statue of a many-breasted goddess and thought what a great image that was for all we have inherited from the Etruscan, Roman, and Christian civilizations of Italy.  She is an image of primal beginnings, the mother of mothers.

When I returned home, I found myself wanting to paint an elephant.  Now this was a curious thing!  Why an elephant?  The image of this goddess had stayed in my mind as an image of my experience in Italy, possibly because I  had felt "fed" in so many different ways--beautiful countryside in every region we passed through, fabulous food (impossible to have a bad meal in Italy), soaring cathedrals, spring flowers, great architecture, paintings, and sculpture.  As my totem animal, elephants represent to me The Great Mother, the Matriarchs, images of care, nurture, and protection.  Also, driving through the Appenine Mountains on the way from Tuscany to Venice, I could not help thinking of Hannibal of Carthage invading Italy with an army on elephants!  

To begin my painting, I needed the general shape of an elephant.  Some things we can draw from memory if we are familiar with them from daily use, such as a cup or a book, but elephants definitely fall into another category.  I find that children's books, with their simple illustrations are a great source for elemental images of animals because the illustrator has generally already drawn only the "essence" of the animal.  So with the phrase, "The Mother of Mothers" running through my thoughts, I turned to Eric Carle's book The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse.

I carefully traced around the general shape of the elephant and adjusted it proportionately so it would fit on my journal pages.

Then I rounded up some rubber stamps which I would use to stamp inside the elephant shape after I painted it.

Then I began to paint my elephant in bright colors of orange, yellow, and red, stamping as I went so that some images would be faded and others would stand out more.

I wanted my elephant to have written on her body the wisdom and knowledge of thousands of years!

Now you can see that there is an elephant in there somewhere.  I have begun to think about ears and trunk.  This is the fun part where I get to play with the image a little, painting the overlap of color out with some yellow and white paint  so that the silhouette is clearer, and deciding where to place the ears and eyes and trunk.

Ah, she is looking a bit trimmer now, her trunk is clearly defined, and I know where her ears will be!  I wanted to give her painted toenails like the elephants we rode in India two years ago, but she was already pretty colorful so I decided to hold back on the bling.

And there she is--The Mother of Mothers!  In the upper left hand corner is a Sri Yantra Mandala which tells me that she includes both masculine and feminine in her tremendous maternality, strength, endurance, and power.   Of course, such images are so personal....but I see a bit of beautiful Italy in her.  Perhaps it is in the way I feel when I look at her.  She speaks to me of great age and survival.

In Italy I met a remarkable woman named Laura, who owns and runs a wonderful Tuscan villa forty minutes from Florence (Villa Lecchi).  We were standing together on the terrace of the villa, which overlooks the stunning beauty of the countryside.  She turned and said:  "In Italy we love the beauty of our country and we work hard to preserve it.  We will not sell it for profit."  As Italy is not a wealthy country, this touched me deeply.  The Italians cherish beauty of every kind;  it is one of their most deeply held values.  They know the value of what came before.  They live in a land of ancient mysteries, close to the Source.

 

 

Migrations of Bird and Spirit

Hello, gentle readers--

I had prepared this post before I left, and now I find that I have returned to an entirely different Oregon, as spring is well underway and the Sun has once again returned to the Pacific northwest.  Warm temperatures prevail and all our rhododendrons are out!  My travels in Italy were so inspiring artistically and spiritually and I will be writing about them, among other things, soon....but decided to go ahead and post this as a way of saying:  "Hi, I'm back and can't wait to get into the studio!"  Elegant finely woven Italian wool purchased in Rome in a gorgeous rose color will make a cape for the Goblin Queen, and handmade lace from the island of Burano near Venice will become a long, delicate dress for Princess Xenia.  Can you tell I have an itch to sew for the Roche girls and others (others being the goblins)?  It feels so good to be home and to be dreaming of new developments for my Little Moon Theatre--soon to be shared!

It was one of those cold windy spring days.  We walked along a path toward the site of a Canadian geese migration resting place.  When I looked up I saw a falcon perched on the topmost branch of a group of bare naked trees, surveying his kingdom.  I wondered what it must all look like to him, with vision that could spot a mouse running on the ground anywhere near.

We approached a  shallow pond surrounded by newly sprung pale minty grasses.  Daisy Doodle quivered with delight at the end of her leash at the scent of something I could not smell.  Then we saw him.

Wow.  He was just walking along, fishing.  Having an ordinary heron lunch.  If I was a cartoon character, my eyes would have done that thing where they leap out of your face on springs.

I think of these as the "dry goods" of winter.  I love the repetition of shapes.  When I see something like this I want to go home and cut stencils and make prints with them.  

It's a bit out of focus, but what can I say?  Here's a guy who knows his worth!

Still trying to master the new camera.  This guy was quietly swimming circles around his new girlfriend.  If this was a Disney movie from the 50's we would have to say he was "twitterpated."  At the very least, he seemed quite single-minded about it.

I love being able to see the same thing below me as I see above me.  It's sort of magical, don't you think?  It makes me feel as if I am in a giant sandwich.

Up ahead we could hear the honking discussions of hundreds of Canadian geese but it seemed to me that this couple had chosen this shady nook for some peace and quiet.

It was not possible to capture the huge extent of these migrating flocks!  This photo just shows one corner of a gathering of hundreds and hundreds of them.  Even as we stood there watching from the bridge, new flocks were arriving from what seemed like every direction and settling in with much honking and cacaphony.  I was puzzled that they were arriving from the north and then realized that some flocks probably had to circle before landing.  A bit of Canadian goose traffic control.

Seeing so many together, it's easy not to see any or to realize the grandeur of each bird.  So I focused on just one.  Then I could really see Canadian gooseness.  Amazing.  A man we met on the trail told us they would all take off together either that afternoon or "tomorrow morning."  He planned to wait until dark, and if they didn't leave, come back before light to witness their departure.  

It was tremendous seeing the wetland so full, full to the brim with huge, jostling, honking birds.  Their purposeful vibration filled the air.  These guys know exactly where they are going.  I wish I could say that.  I never know where I am going....but Mr. Bill is my own personal border collie.  He keeps me somewhat oriented.

As we walked back, the honking grew quieter and more distant, and what was empty and quiet also filled my heart with its vibration.

" I seek acquaintance with Nature--to know her moods and manners.  Primitive nature is most interesting to me.  I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I learn that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read , that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places.  I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars.  I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth."

                                   --Henry David Thoreau    March 23,1856

 

 

 

 

Each New Year

On either side of our front door, we have huge rounded daphne bushes.  They are among the first flowers to bloom in the spring.  Their incredible perfume is indescribable--a pungent, heady, sweet scent.  I love to stand on the front porch and inhale it from two directions at once!

An enormous eight foot white rhodendron in the backyard is preparing to blast us with hundreds of blooms.  In the Hindu tradition, rhododendrons carry the meaning of a divine beauty which spends and gives itself without reserve.

One half of our ancient white cherry tree seems to have died but the other half soldiers on.  No wonder Sakura (the blossoming of the cherry trees) is a sacred time in Japan.  They treasure each stage of the coming of the flowers and have different terms for each stage:  the bud, the slight opening, the tender bloom, the full blossom, the fadong blossom, and finally, the slow and gradual drifting of the petals into the open air as they leave the tree and fall to the ground.  People go on family expeditions and walks in order to experience the beauty of each stage.  At the final stage, they go to the parks and have picnics under the falling blossoms.  Sigh.

A pale pink rhododendron pushes out her blossoms.  Winter in the Pacific Northwest is wet, cold, dark, and dreary.....and then we get this!  About the middle of April we all start talking about how glad we are that we live here.  Before that, we are all wondering how we might be able to swing a trip to Hawaii.

Each year when I see these, I vow to plant more of them in the fall.  They are the very essence of Spring!

Tulips carry the meaning of trust and success.  They certainly brought success, wealth, and fame to the Dutch who discovered and cultivated them.  There were even wars fought over tulips!  Only human beings could fight a war over a flower.  Amazing, isn't it?

Daffodils are the flower of chivalry.  Legend has it that this is because it sometimes stands in the snow alone, waiting for the rest of the spring flowers to come out.

  Ruffled white narcississi!  Bliss on a stem!  The narcissus often stands nodding over the edge of a pool or pond.  Greek legend tells of a youth lured  to a pond, where he saw his reflection in the water and was so bedazzled by his own beauty that he could not leave, and died gazing at his own image.  So in the West, the naricissus is the flower of egotism, but in the East, to the Chinese, the narcissus is a sacred lily, a symbol of purity and promise!   Then there are the yellow and pink ranunculus in my mother-in-law's garden...

The ranunculus was used in Victorian times to tell a lover that he or she was rich in charm and attraction.

Everywhere I see the little grape hyacinths in their happy little bands.  The Koran praises the hyacinth.  If you have just two loaves left, it says, sell one and buy hyacinths "to feed thy soul."

For years, I thought of primroses as such ordinary flowers.  Then I saw how beautiful they could be under a careful gardener's tending.  My mother-in-law's primroses live up to their English heritage of meaning love and hope.  In Switzerland, mountaineers carried primroses as they climbed as an antidote to vertigo.

In flower essence therapy, we give bleeding heart to those whose most intimate and heart-felt relationship has dissolved.  As a flower essence, this flower enables one to fill the inner need with strong spiritual forces, so that the capacity to love another is based on the ability to honor and nourish the self.  For those whose mate has died, we give Love Lies Bleeding, a flower that lies prostrate on the ground and blooms from there.

I would like to dedicate this post to my mother-in-law, Jean Watson Specht, an extraordinary gardener who works with Nature to create, even in her 80's, gardens of sweet and intimate beauty.  And she does it "without a lot of fancy stuff!"  (That is something she would say if she were writing this.)

"Each new year is a surprise to us.  We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence.  How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening; reminiscenses of our sanest hours?  The voice of nature is always encouraging."

                                        Henry David Thoreau   March 18, 1858

                   ...........................................................

And now, gentle readers, I want to inform you that I will be away from my blog for three weeks.  I am off to gather artistic inspiration in foreign lands, and when I return--big surprises!!  Until then, arrivaderci!

 

 

 

 

 

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Painting in my Journal On A Rainy Afternoon

Here is a new Mimi, who is both winsome and thoughtful, and somewhat older than the Blue Mimi I posted earlier.

She is thinking of another world, rich with creatures and events unknown in this world.

Here are the two halves together:

Later, I wrote underneath the lowest rainbow:  "We must learn to hold both the Light and the Dark within ourselves and accord to each an equal value, for wholeness consists of relating to both."

I liked that weird little elephant so I decided to paint another one.  He morphed into my old friends, Blue Beastie and Mr. Mellow, the toucan.  

Black gesso is really fun to draw on with a white pen!  Here is the other half:

"Viriditas" means "greening."  When Hildegarde of Bingen used that term, she meant the eternal greening and renewing of the world.  In Spring I always remember this:  viriditas, always becoming new.

Something new is coming together for me now.  Spirit and matter dancing together--in the buds of spring, in little girls with rain umbrellas, in Blue Beastie with his toucan friend, and in a renewed love for the little girl I once was myself.

We all have so many new buds within us, still waiting to be discovered by us, waiting to be brought forward into bloom.  Don't you feel that sometimes?

Isn't it grand?  We can never exhaust them.  Never.

The Sweet Pea Came To Visit

During Spring Break, the Sweet Pea (P for Paloma) came to visit with her mother.  After an hour of watching a Pingo DVD from an old car seat on the living room floor, she decided that she wanted to go to the park.  As it was a typical Oregon spring day--sun, sprinkles, and showers, this involved a coat, a hat, rain boots, and an umbrella.

At two and a half, she can put on her own hat and coat and boots.  She can even inflate her own umbrella.....but then, with both hands full managing the umbrella, how does she open the door?

"Grandma, where are you?" said a little voice.

"Open door, Grandma!"  (At this point she discovered that she could twirl the umbrella, not a great thing to discover inside.)

"Maybe it will be easier to go through the door with your umbrella down," said Grandma.

Re-inflating the umbrella, an interesting process which has to be repeated several times.

Ah!  Fully inflated!

"Grandma, aren't you coming?"  At this point, Grandma points out that the Sweet Pea's very patient mother is waiting for her at the end of the walk.  "Go show Mama how to inflate her umbrella!"  (Think happy smile on two year old face here.)

And off they went, side by side, with two umbrellas well in hand.  Some events of early childhood just belong to the beginnings of Spring, don't you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Play Journal to Art Journal

In my last post, I discussed the many uses of a Play Journal/notebook, so today I thought I might demonstrate how a theme might move from my Play Journal to my "Remember Yourself" Journal.  Recently I woke up with the phrase "Voices of a New Day" in my consciousness.  I liked it so much that I thought I might like to make a page around it for my "Remember Yourself" Journal.  So I got out my Play Journal and drew a circle.  Then I spied some angel stamps which had arrived in the mail recently from Sherrill Kahn.  I really had no idea of where I was going when I started.

I stamped the phrase underneath.  Now what?  I knew I wanted to  use watercolor but I was not working on watercolor paper and I didn't want the watercolor to run all over my figures.  Not knowing how to solve that problem, I decided to color the figures with Prismacolor pencils.  While I was doing this, I realized the waxy pencils would act as an impenetrable "resist" and I would not have to worry about the watercolor!

I colored the other angel in tones of blue and orange:

Now I had to decide what to do with the circle.  I could erase it but then my angels would be hanging in mid air!  I decided to make a mandala....but how to do that with the angels interrupting things?  Then I remembered that I  have quite a few mandala stencils, so I chose one of those and traced it in the middle of the mandala, leaving out the parts where the angels were.

I also converted my stamped letters into three dimensional letters by adding a thin line to the left side of all the verticals.  This would give me a place to add some color to the letters later on.  My next step was to color  the mandala with colored pencils.  Then, finally, I added the watercolor background.

Several things happened during the afternoon I spent working on this.  First of all, I was thrilled with the way the paper took the colored pencil, but not entirely happy with the stenciled mandala which does not read well and is too small.  However, this is a problem which is easily fixed and I will show you all, gentle readers, how to do this in a future post!

I thought the whole thing looked "washed out" on the white background.  From this experiment I knew I would have to make a "real" mandala" to express my "Voices of a New Day" theme and mount it on a painted background.  I knew I wanted a facing page where I could write some text, and I knew I wanted white text on a dark background versus black stamped letters on a white background.  Overall, I was very happy with everything I had learned from my first attempt, and especially happy to discover how much fun  it was to work with Sherrill Kahn's wonderful stamps!  They are very detailed and so thick they can be used unmounted with ease.  They are fabulous for colored pencil work!  (To find Sherrill's stamps, go to ImpressMe.com.)

Above is the mandala I painted in watercolor.  Looking carefully, you can  see the beginning of the colored pencil work.  Below is the completed mandala with all the colored pencil work finished.

I drew an extra external border on the mandala and further defined it with a black border.  Later I added golden glitter glue dots around the black border. The colored pencil work really added to the sense of luminosity.  The trick is to keep your pencil verrrry sharp and to keep your touch light....and to be patient.  This kind of work takes a while!

Here is the full two page layout as it appears in my "Remember Yourself" Journal:

It was so much fun doing this!  I wrote some text about how my brain gets overloaded with all the voices and images I want to manifest in my art-making.  I used a stencil and Inka golden iridescent paint to create those brain cells and then drew the little white lines with an opaque Signa white ink ballpoint.  (Opaque Signa pens are my favorite art tool of all time.  You can buy them from Dick Blick online one at a time or by the box--like I do.)  I imagined what the "new voices" would sound like and wrote some ancient music for them at the bottom of the page.  Overall, I like it much better than my first draft in my Play Journal.

Right now my golden brain cells are dancing sambas with more ideas for those Sherrill Kahn stamps.  I have about twenty sets of them but never got around to doing much with them......now I am thinking, "What if.........?"

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The samba?....or is it a passionate tango?  Yes, definitely a very exciting tango, just Sherrill and me, back and forth across the studio floor!

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to keep a Play Journal

 

 How is a "play" journal different from other art journals?  Well, it's different because this is where we play, experiment, try new things, stumble across new discoveries, try out new media.....and make mistakes.  Sometimes big mistakes!  And it doesn't matter because it's a Play Journal!

 Art journals used to be places where artists jotted down ideas for art ventures and design ideas, or simply doodled in the hope that something new would arise.  After the term "art journaling" was borrowed by the mixed media gals & guys, it took on a different feeling, a more serious deeply personal feeling.  Not too much dinking around happening in those art journals.

Inventing characters, making up ancient languages and runes, drawing nature spirits, inventing borders for "illustrated manuscripts" of my own devising are things I like to make notes for in my Play Journal.  Here is one of my favorite characters, Mr. Mellow:

Mr. Mellow and Blue Beastie (seen at the top) are friends and appeared later in several large scale drawings (16" x 24") I did with copic markers.  The sketches of Nature Spirits you saw above later evolved into Australian flavored Mimis.  Picasso once said it took him ten years to learn to draw and paint as well as Rembrandt but a lifetime to remember how to draw and paint like a child.  

The image above was created from a rubber stamp by Sherrill Kahn--but note the resemblance to the nature spirits I had drawn earlier before I owned the stamp!  In our Play Journals we discover what we like, and we recognize it when we see it again.   In my Play Journal I love to experiment with rubber stamps, washi tapes, new pens, stencils, Inka, and watercolors.

 

In my Play Journal, I don't worry about being totally original.  It's my own personal big Pinterest board where I save photos and online blog downloads for future inspiration.  The Tree of Life Image here is from a greeting card, and the Raven is a pastel painting by Dawn Emerson.  I like to collage with these things and paint around them.  It's a form of Doodle play!

The watercolor painting on the left is a copy of one by Pam Garrison and is there to remind me to try painting watercolor flowers freehand some time soon.  It is an ancient tradition to learn by copying the Masters, and in my estimation, Pam is one of the great mixed media "fun art" Masters.  I love the way she invents flowers and plants and sometimes I copy them for practice in making up my own. Below is another Pam Garrison copy.....sort of.  I started making up my own flowers about half-way through.

When I find photos that touch me deeply, I will paint a suitable background and then paste in the photo.  I find photos like this in National Geographic.....things like 700 year old cherry trees.  (When I cannot credit the individual photographer, I credit the source.)  Images are so important, especially those that touch our soul.  I enjoy paying my respect and gratitude to them and their makers by pasting them into my Play Journal where I can contemplate them again at a later date.  They provide inspiration, both direct and indirect, for future art-making ventures.  Here are a few examples:

I placed this photo in my Play Journal to remind me of the beautiful repetition of line which the bamboo trunks make, the dozens of colors and shades of green, the play of light against the dark, the soft dark spongy carpet of fallen leaves underneath, and the way the light breaks through in shafts.  Any or all of these aspects and/or qualities may show up in my art-making.  Here is another from a decorating magazine:

I love the red, orange, and coral pillow up against those brilliant turquoise pillows, and all of it against a soft grey background.  Definitely a color scheme I would like to incorporate into my mandalas!

Recently, I had an important dream of a woman dressed all in white robes who lived in a tower in a land of ice and snow.  As I often do, I wanted to find an image that could capture the feeling this dream had for me.  I downloaded a couple of images from Misty Mawn's blog and put them in my Play Journal, making alterations which more closely "felt" like my dream.  (Misty is an extraordinary painter of great sensitivity and her paintings have a strong dream-like quality.)

I cut down Misty's painting and added my own mandala, background papers, and text.  In this way, I will be able to keep this important dream in consciousness and perhaps make more art in response to it.  I also altered a second painting by Misty, somewhat warmer in feeling.  The title I gave it for my own purposes is from a poem by John Keats.

A Play Journal can be a place to experiment, play, preserve images to which you might return, do a bit of dreamwork, or sketch out pages for another, more serious journal.  It all depends on what your "inner artist (age 5)" wants to do today!

Watercolor boxes (this one is Pam's), washi tape, mandalas, pink paint, and ancient cherry trees--can you hum along with me?--"these are a few of my favorite things!"

PS--You have to love a country where certain  trees are regarded as "national living treasures."

      

Honoring My Teacher

For nearly eight years, from 1993-2001, I studied mandala drawing with the late Judith Cornell, an artist and teacher of great inspiration and spiritual power.  For Judith, her search for the Divine was the center point of her life and she was completely committed to it.  She taught weekend classes and also week long residential workshops for many years at New Age centers such as Omega, Esalen, Mt. Madonna, and the Angela Center.  In her final years, she took her work into hospitals, where she worked with cancer patients and others with terminal illnesses.  One of her last projects, which required a year of traveling in India, was a biography she wrote about the "Hugging Saint," Amma (Amritanandamayi Ma).  Toward the end of her life, Judith converted to Hinduism in a ceremony in Hawaii and took a new name:  Rajita Sivenanda.   I am not certain but believe this might be translated as "Servant of Eternal Light (God)."

To honor Rajita and all that she taught me, much of which escapes language, I decided to post some of the mandalas I drew in her classes, which were oases of peace, divine light, and palpable Spirit.

             Rajita Sivenanda:   May 8, 1941--May 18, 2010

Judith perfected a method using black paper as a base to supply the dark values, a white pencil underpainting to supply the light values, and a second layer of color to finish.  This made it possible for beginners to achieve a wonderful "success" in their first class with her.  Each drawing period was preceded by a short period of meditation.  We were then told to draw the image that arose from within.  This was my first experience of drawing the Light Within.

These mandalas were drawn in a notebook that measures 10" x 10".

In her residential workshops, we would come in early in the morning, and sit in a circle on the floor.  In the center of the circle was an impromptu "altar" on which we placed religious objects and photos of saints and leaders from all religions.  Often  there were flowers and water offerings.  Then Rajita would lead us in a 20 minute meditation, which we would end by chanting "OM."  Then we would go have breakfast.  It was such a beautiful way to begin a day!

Sometimes we worked all day on a mandala into we had put much thought and care.  Judith would then build a fire and we would burn them ceremonially.  These were lessons in non-attachment (and in some cases, in how attachment causes suffering!)

The spiritual atmosphere in the room was gentle and allowing.  The entire process was one of relaxing and receiving an inner image.

Once I received the image of a beautiful Indian goddess figure.  I could not draw the figure so I drew her jewels in the mandala above.

Then I drew the wreath I wished to lay at the feet of my most beloved saint, Anandamayi Ma.

In one class she had us meditate on a person in the class whose name we drew out of a hat and then draw a mandala for them.  When we exchanged them at the end of the day, the response to the images was amazing as each person saw something of themselves, their life, or their health that they had not seen before and felt was accurate.

Over the years, the mandalas I drew slowly changed and became more expressive of my inner life.  This one wanted to grow off the page!

I was doing a lot of weaving at the time and tried to integrate "woven" iconography into my mandalas.   

This was my first "Tree of Life" mandala.  This sacred image of the Axis Mundi is one that I have worked with in many different ways at various times.

Inspiration comes from many sources.  In the mandala above I was thinking of the Edelweiss flower.

Over the years, it seemed as though the energy in the mandalas grew stronger and more dynamic.  This taught me that if I stayed with a "thread" and followed it, it would change and transform itself many times.  Note the Celtic chain motif in the mandala below--I lost some brain cells over that one.

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During a period when I passed through a "Dark Night of the Soul", drawing my mandalas helped me "hold to the center" and steer my little boat through choppy waters.  As a spiritual practice, it is very steadying.

These two mandalas below are variations on the sacred symbol of the Sri Yantra, the union of the masculine and feminine energies:

My last two mandalas on black paper had the addition of glitter glue, which didn't seem to work as well as I thought it would, so I began to look for ways to create luminous mandalas on white paper.

Rajita created an amazingly beautiful book which was recently re-issued in a tenth anniversary edition:  Mandala.  For this and so much more, I express my gratitude and appreciation.  Rajita Sivenendra was the sort of person one meets only once in a lifetime.

Dear Judith, dear Rajita, wherever you are now residing, please know that we remember you and that we cherish what you taught us.