life-shift – Page 2 – Mixy's Art Blog

Happy landings, shininess

a few days ago I landed in Seattle, and I fell in love with the place.

Not least for the Seattle Center which includes the Experience Music Project – the EMP Museum – the most amazingly shiny building I’ve ever encountered – which I spent a good hour or so just circling and photographing while oohing and ahing.

Designed by Frank O Gehry, this extraordinary building has colours that seem to shift as you walk round, and the wobbly surface make for funky reflections. Get these…

And Chihuly Garden and Glass —oh my days!! —If you’re like me and get giddy on shiny things, this is a place that will make your heart sing!

Check back soon — I’ll post up the pics from there once I’ve filtered through them. (I took approx a gazillionty-hundred-and-twelve… watch this space!!)

jumping!

I’m taking a big jump into the unknown this week!

Since I was a little thing I’ve dreamed of visiting the USA. That magical place I saw on TV. Over the subsequent years I’ve made some half baked plans, but now it’s actually going to happen! The spirit of seven year old me is going to meet Mork & Mindy, along with all the accumulated wishes and hopes of every version of me that’s existed since then. (should I pack more clothes? – that’s a lot of us)

I’m going to meet up with some very dear (until now online) friends while I’m there, and I’m truly in bits with anticipation at this!

In the hope to soak in as much as I can in my couple of weeks I’ve planned a cross country trip by train to see as much as I can, so I’ll be whizzing through seven states in all.

I’ll keep you posted along the way – as time and wifi permits – and I’ll take some photos for you too! 😉

Big love, dear pals X

merging emerging

Last night I couldn’t sleep. So I painted. And I pondered.

The magic of metallic paint on cushiony soft paper, that biro marks indent and cast tiny shadow outlines.

Life is as quick as a flash, a sprint through some generations and it’s done.

And life is a slow evolution, spiralling up through understanding new layers of the game.

It’s both.

Everything & Nothing. Empty & Full.

Contrast & Confusion. Zigs & Zags.

Deep & Shallow.

Some folk like to scramble the edge, following the truths they’ve chosen to absorb, busying away their days in occupation and activity, punctuated with ritual and escapism.

Fearful of treading over the lines, getting their toes wet, or worse.

Some folk run at it fast, not leaving anything to chance, escaping the dangers by out-running and out-witting. No way is right, no way is wrong. We’re all just making it up one bit at a time.

~~~~~

I’ve been listening to Pete Holmes’ podcasts: You Made It Weird. He kept me company through the night, kept me laughing and thinking. So far I’ve really love love loved his interactions with Liz Gilbert & Deepak Chopra and been curiously riled by Noel Gallagher & Tim Minchin.

hello/goodbye

Yesterday I went to the funeral of the mother of an old friend. I don’t see him much these days, our lives distanced in different directions, but as a teenager I spent some time hanging out at his house and with his family, so I went along to say hello/goodbye.

The last time we saw each other, a few years ago, was the funeral of another of the group who used to hang out. The brother of our lost friend was there as well. The previous grief rolled back in. As I walked home after my mind was flooded.

The sanctuary of this book was waiting for me, glad of the space between it’s pages to drift and soothe and hush the thoughts. There are no rules in here. Nothing appropriate or other. Just release.

Revisiting the crematorium, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been there, from my cousin when I was 15 through generations of friends and relations. With every attendance, every ceremony, each the same and each achingly unique, another layer of mourning.

The logical mind tries to interpret grief intellectually as profound sadness associated with an inexplicable ending, but it isn’t, it’s much more confusing than that.

It’s all of the emotions, all of the feelings in accelerating succession, then as that rhythm starts to normalise, another avalanche. And repeating, and repeating. Inexplicable, inappropriate, quite strange. I remember feeling indestructible after mum died. In conversation yesterday someone was saying how he floated in an unexplained elation for months after a close loss. Troubling and comforting in balanced measure.

I often think of how different our lives have become in just a few generations, since the media driven onslaught of communication. By partaking in modern society our circle of acquaintance is inflated to absurd proportions in unrestricted encounters.

These encounters zip back and forth in time, meaning for the first time in humanity we can spend time in the company of someone – albeit a one-way version of them – at any point in their lives. Years aren’t played out in consecutive order and the resultant discombobulation unsettles us, I believe, more than we understand.

Perhaps this is the shake up we need, rattling us out of the old paradigms.

on letting go, on moving on

Continuing from yesterpost, as I’m finding my place in this book, it’s finding its place in my days.

I’m loving the contrast of my art against the books original purpose (which I spoke of more over here). The waves and the lines criss-crossing the verbal nonsense. More than this I’m enjoying the meditation of the evening ritual this book plays out in my life. It’s very lack of specific purpose is becoming it’s purpose.

It’s a bit solid ground in uncertain times as I’m feeling unsettled in aspects of my life with the turmoil of transition, that awkward movement into unknown territory. It sits in part of my world where I know I can keep moving, one little step at a time.

Behind the noise of confusion I soften the day, here is my haven. I leave the other realities, partially dismantled, they can wait for now.

I’m drawing in a series of moments of now.

I’m relishing the freedom: detaching from outcome , delighting in the hope, focussing on process,

the less I plan, the more fun I have.

The more I let go, the more I let go.

unruliness

Last month I declared my intent for a new phase of being me.

The new rules? there are no rules. This is my age of unruliness!

So to start off I’m simplifying; I’m streamlining.

I’m de-cluttering my life both literally and figuratively. Honestly, permanently and fundamentally. It’s proving a wrench to begin, if I’m honest about it, but I do believe once I build up a bit of momentum there’ll be nothing to stop me.

I’ve heard good things about Marie Kondo’s book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, so I’m watching this as a substitute for reading it. I can’t add to the pile of to-read-next books that’s remained untouched for an uncomfortably long time now. And I love irony. I still can’t.

Through the first 45 years of this life I gathered and collected. I took things on and things built up – actual things and symbolic things – I inherited these traits along with a lot of accumulated junk and an assortment of mismatched thought patterns and beliefs.

And the conclusion I’ve drawn from looking into this? it’s exhausting, confusing and not something I’m prepared to pursue any further.

I’m really going to shake this whole bag of nonsense up and see what sticks and what falls off. If it falls off it’s not mine to care about any more.

Climbing out of that old existence. This time is my time.

I plan to free up enough space that I can stretch out both arms and touch the outer edges of my imagination. I think that this colourful outpouring is part of that process and all these troubled tense scribbles are an outlet. As are the hectic dreams of monsters and gremlins that bite my arms and chew on my feet in my sleep.

I want to be free to explore the dreams I always knew would find their time.

Their time is now.

the ‘because’ of art journaling

I’ve got old journals – the ‘dear diary’ variety – dating back over decades. Of no interest to anyone but occasionally me, I see what me-in-the-past was up to on this day however-many years ago.

At art school I began to keep sketchbooks, filled it with thoughts and plans, doodles and scraps. Mainly visual references and test grounds for techniques and materials. And they’re as rich in memories to me as the purely wordy versions that preceded them.

Last year I experimented with Julia Cameron’s morning pages in an on-again/off-again fashion. Not every morning has the space to accommodate all those words, but a bigger block is that part of me resented the paper it required for long, one-way streams of consciousness that I shouldn’t want to revisit. And the thought of scrawling longhand every last niggle and fuss didn’t sit comfortably either. I get the ‘better out than in’ motive. But I didn’t want to hold volumes of this in my life thought; that seemed to be merely displacing it from my head to another place of permanence.

Three things about things I do in books.
Without much connection beyond my voracious consumption of stationery.

Until I read this blog post by Deanna Jinjoe where she speaks of the power of transformation in burying words, thoughts, sentiments into the soul of our art we can transform them into a new beauty.

So the art journal I’m working through now is starting to embody this essence. With traces of the therapeutic brain dumps that keep my mind clear, intertwined with the doodles and splatterings of colour that keep my spirit buoyant.

Wednesday to Wednesday: phase two.

Imagine. Just imagine… being able to make up your own rules.

Sure, some of the old ones still have to apply: do as you would be done by, two wrongs don’t make a right, gravity, etc. But what about the rest of them? Why ever would we allow anyone else to dictate the hows and the whys beyond these fundamentals?

This morning I was pondering this question.

So much is programmed into our thinking, our knowing, when we’re way too small to offer up much objection. Of if we try to we’re dismissed as not having enough understanding of the bigger picture. Right – like anyone has a mind broad and deep enough to encompass all of that. Our programmers – our significant care-givers, parents, family, teachers, and preferred celebrity heroes (real and fictional) – they’re still too little to get it all too. Everyone is. Even the oldests and the wisests. All of them!

Tomorrow is my birthday, my personal New Year, less arbitrary than January 1st (for those of us born on one of the other days of the year). As I was born on a Wednesday I’m attaching something to the fact it’s a Wednesday again this time round. Although this happens every 5-6 years, I just hadn’t given it much thought until this time.

To celebrate this turn of number, I’m considering making some new rules, some new truths, for this next phase of being me. I haven’t fine-tuned the details yet, but I think that being me is going to be different. Less limited. More fun.

I’m going out for a walk and a think, I’ll tell you more when I’ve mulled over the finer details.

Flow

My word for 2016 is Flow. I made a pinterest board for my word when I started doing this last year, but this time I’m amping up the imagery by having these pins printed out and in one of my journals.

This way it’s something I see most days, and I guess is more Vision-Board-y like this.

There’s space left for words and gaps for more images. I like to think it will develop as the year goes on.

3 weeks: 5 realisations

3 weeks into this year, I’m learning to adapt to this new structure that’s unfolding.

I live by metaphors, they are the framework of all my understanding. The skeleton on which I hang my beliefs and theories.

Since January 1st 2016 I’ve filled one of these 1″ squares each day. They are in a book with enough pages to carry this daily practice over a few years. Will I do that? I hope to. The project is entitled Self Love 365 and everyone who shares their daily squares has a unique interpretation. I love to see how our days are represented and recorded.

I’m looking at my first 3 weeks of squares and seeing a good degree of haphazardness, conflicting colours, but a bigger pattern is beginning to emerge.

When I drew out the grid I left a little gap between each square – it allowed one week to fit tidily across the width of the page that way, every day has a margin of breathing space. Except I’m scrappy and resistant to constraint by edges. Some days expand and overflow, some are linked by doodled extras.

To begin, I had trouble connecting the project to self love. Now I’m starting to understand. Here are some aspects of kindness I’m extending to myself:

Scrappy and overflowing are character traits not flaws. Vital in the Yin/ Yang of conformity.
The few minutes I set aside each day are a meditation, a discipline, a habit. Sometimes it’s easier than others to find the minutes, some days I want to doodle on ahead, but I keep rolling along, one square a day.
If I can see patterns develop over 3 weeks, undoubtedly I’ll get more insights over the coming months. This is a gift to me in the future.
Hustling for extra meaning isn’t necessary. It might emerge on its own, it might not. Patience!
It’s a whole book of unfolding metaphors for me to carry on defining my sense of how things are.