thinkings – Page 4 – Mixy's Art Blog

something familiar going on…

We’ve all got our own way of categorising, organising, ordering our worlds about us. And we often aren’t even aware of this until we encounter someone whose ways differ greatly from our own.

For me, it’s by colour. (no shit…really?)

Back in a previous life when I was an office bunny who shuffled papers and rattled at a keyboard all day I sought out opportunities to invent new systems I could colour-code.

I’d spend any spare time buried in the stationery catalogues, choosing folders and files and highlighter pens.

What I came to realise much later on was that I just had a thirst for colour and creativity that was going unquenched.

Beyond that, colour is the defining visual attribute I’ll notice over any other: He’s the guy in the blue shirt, it’s the house with the red paintwork, the shop with the green & yellow signboard … I don’t know any of their names, but I usually know what colours they are.

It occurred to me today, as I edited these images from my current journal to show you, a habit of mine to spend a time with a group of colours.

I revel in their company, their character, the memories they muster and the feelings they stir up.

When sated, I can move on, visit a different range of the spectrum.

I never know which colours will appear next, or how long I’ll be in the company of my current companions. But while we’re together, they will seep into aspects of my day without me even realising.

I put these images together, here I am in the realms of purple and a little to either side, and I felt a pang of familiarity, a sense that something’s closer than I realise…

I looked down at what I’m wearing….

Oh yeh… I see what’s gong on here!

universal things

We’ve all got our theories, our beliefs, or rules by which – with varying degrees of conviction – we play this game.

The nutshelled version of my belief system is: We’re all doing the best that we can, given the resources and information we have to work with, and that nobody knows what’s going on.

Not with any hard-core provable certainty. (No matter what they claim).

We’re all holding on as best we can, to what we can reality on this little blue orb spinning about somewhere in the midst of an unimaginably large amount of other stuff that popular science tells us is expanding, at high speed, into … into… well … more of the what we don’t know what.

One notion I’m drawn to is the fractal universe. I like Carl Sagan’s description here:

I find the soothing quality of his voice makes something mind-stretchingly unimaginable sound so simple, almost obvious.

I’m not a scientist, and I’m not that interested in debating the detail (explanations usually collapse under their own weight anyway), I just find this notion pleasingly tidy.

I’m totally intrigued by feedback loops. (this very snippet from Mr Sagan appears somewhere in this – I’ll post the full version one day… Remind me)

It’s all made up of loops: It all feels like a loop. Like, a spiralling loop.

What?

Don’t give me that look…

These are the eyes belonging to the half face that we saw a few pages ago. See. That’s like a loop too.

spinning into spring

A few days past the Equinox – whichever hemisphere you’re reading this from – we’ve all just tipped a balance of seasons.

I’m typing to you from the north, so my days are now eversoslightly longer then my nights.

Which makes me glad.

It suits my intermittent insomniac tendencies – if it isn’t cold and dark when I wake up my days are more likely to begin earlier – and in turn rebalance my days and nights into natural circadian rhythms. (Until next time…)

Last week my sleep was completely unsettled.

Beginning with the night I had all the nightmares that children get where beasties and monsters are chewing my feet. And my tired mind forgets it’s just a dream and refuses to go back there just in case.

Popular science de jour supports the belief that missed sleeps can’t exactly be repaid at a later date, and rather than try to catch up, it’s better to enforce a bed time and wake time, forcing the body to comply. Good sleep hygiene. All that stuff.

I’ve tried that.

The obstinate donkey that runs my brain doesn’t like that game, so won’t play.

We (me & donkeybrain) have to lay there all restless and thinky for a long time when we try this. Unmedicated early nights are effective only when preceded by some fairly appalling regard to rest for a good few days by way of a build up. Even the donkey doesn’t think that’s wise.

If I do get to sleep by my ideal of 11pm I fall into what feels like a deliciously deep, eight hour, dream fuelled, well rested slumber. Mmmmmm…

But in reality turns out to have lasted just 90 minutes or so.

And is followed by any combination of thinky/over-thinky/wide-awake/best-ideas-ever-just-not-quite-awake-enough-to-write-down-or-record-somehow/what-the-crazies-was-that-dream-meant-to-be-about?…………….

I mean – it’s rarely worrisome thoughts – I’m not that ball of anxiety (had that in previous chapters, thankfully free of that now). So it could be worse.

I say to myself: Shush, it will be morning soon, you just need to shush back to sleep for a little while til then… continually for 5-6 hours before another 90 min nap.

Last week I had two consecutive nights on just scraps of rest and a few really busy days with a lot of fresh air and walking. So that should be an effective reset, right?

Then the weekend was almost totally filled up with sleep.

Like the rest of my life, I think I’m probably quite well balanced on average – but looking at individual episodes I’m mostly to be found on the outer edges of everything.

There we are.

This isn’t me, but she can be my representative in this tale of chaos. Standing there in her mismatched legs, holding onto her head (keeping the donkey in – he has his uses) and leaning – all casual like – against the one edge of this so called reality. Just for now.

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.

A questioning mind…

You know me – you know how I love to puzzle something out. I was wondering about my current art journal recently. Join me over on Dirty Footprints Studio for my monthly guest post where I unscramble these thoughts about just this.

PG_questioning_FEATURE

thoughts de jour

Traditional journalling – the outpouring of words and thoughts and the recording of happenings, events and reactions is quite linear: these things occurred, then were recorded; these things were planned and projected, then recorded.

Art journalling is far more holistic. Even the most literal illustrations are cast in the light of the mood, defined by the view of the artist and constricted by the limitations of their style and skill.

And then there’s this whole exploration of the psyche that forms from the deluge of abstraction that some of us create.

Like many other artists who play this game, mine is largely an unplanned stream of consciousness.

As life ebbs and flows there are periods dominated by torrential outbursts of imagery.

I’m driven by a force beyond my thoughts to combine and construct these collections of objects, images and notions. They make no sense at the time and only sometimes later can I pick out an impression of context, a reflection of thought.

Meanwhile, I enjoy the colours and the nonsense. Another metaphor for life.

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.