thinkings – Page 7 – Mixy's Art Blog

What if….

Of all the things we cling to, I find expected outcomes are hard to drop. Some hope of sense of stability or control… That desire to know what’s next, where I’m steering towards and what it’ll look like when I get there. Which I know isn’t real.

Just imagine the possibilities that could show themselves.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately.

Last night I was listening to Darryl Anka. He’s one of those people who has a wonderfully down-to-earth quality offsetting some totally out there ideas. Some of which I know are hard to entertain for a lot of folks… but I was particularly fascinated by this talk. (It’s a loooong talk, this bit is around 58 mins in if you wanna cut to the chase!)

He’s saying the same — the key to the magic in life:
Do what you love, what excites and enriches you
Do it to the absolute utmost of your ability
Do it with no attachment to the outcome.

So I’ll persevere …

Sometimes..

Sometimes you got to hold out your soul in both hands, offer it up to the world, and hope.

The Sum of Its Metaphors

Following on from the More Than The Sum posts. Y’know what? this week I finally completed the project! 18 months since the initial brief, the planning, the researching, the thinking and playing began. 16 collaged portraits which will be hanging in their final home tomorrow.

Almost all art has at least one metaphor. Sometimes it’s a visual message, daft or clever, subtle or blatant. And often times it’s something that shows itself in the creative process.

This piece was always going to be heavy on the metaphor. It’s to be displayed in the reception area of the National Spinal Injury Centre at Stoke Mandeville hospital, so it will be seen by hospital staff, the patients, their families, friends and dear ones. It’ll become part of the back drop to a range of emotion – shock, fear, interminable waiting, hope, intensity, perseverance, dedication, and so much more. Purpose-wise, top level: it’s bright, colourful, and a visual distraction. Close up their road-map qualities show up and the faces almost disappear. They might be a place to get lost in for a while.

But the meaning goes deeper than that.

As you know, the collages are made from intricate screen print/drawings which was the first of the metaphors – the repeating patterns, the tiny detail – the repeated exercises of physio and occupation therapies, the gradual steps toward more independence. The incredible patience and strength of character this demands from all involved. Layer on layer of print and drawing – day after week after month of incremental progress in recovery.

The metaphor that shows up in the process: How life is so contradictory sometimes.

Wouldn’t you think you’d see something better close up. You would, though, wouldn’t you?

….apart from when looking too closely at something makes it vanish. From a distance: there it is. No doubt. Get closer and it fades out of sight. WTF? Really? Yes. Something like not being able to see the wood for the trees… perhaps.

These are some of the metaphors. Tomorrow I’ll show you the completed work, and describe the rest of the message.

Holy Aphorisms, Batman!

I love a snappy aphorism, some pertinent thought inspiring little snippet of wisdom.

Spend any time at all on facebook, pinterest, or the like, and you’ll be up to your armpits in them before you’ve realised. And, like anything, they can get a bit indigestable en masse like this.

That’s why this made me smile so much:

The Art of Letting Go

The things we learn at art school, that aren’t really art…

I’ve learnt how to let go.

I started out with very fixed thinking mentality. I made myself decide what the finished result would look like as a starting point. Then trying to find a path to get from point A (nothing) to point Z (end product). It was hugely frustrating. Not just for me – I could see it in the face of my tutors too. But I didn’t understand why.

I spent so many years drifty doodling about aimlessly, I had no idea I could choose my direction and just go off n see where I got to.

Stubbornly resistant to the organic process – sketching, researching, dabbling, documenting and recording, experimenting, trial and error, figuring out – I wanted to race to the finish line and then jump into the next thing. Inner kid was at the wheel, and she travels at one speed only – giddyingly fast! Although she brings the very necessary vitality and exuberance, she doesn’t do planning or calm. And in order to get the best results I (we) could, these elements cannot be mutually exclusive.

I look back at early projects and think: what a bizarre way of going about things! (but isn’t that a life thing too?)

I believe we create best within a set of parameters. Told you can only have 3 colours for your painting, 3 notes for your tune, 3 minutes for your idea … set a restriction, and it forces the imagination swell to fill the limits. When you don’t have access to everything in the toy box, you can really set about making the best of what you’ve got.

While I already knew this, my first ‘free choice’ projects at college freaked the bejeebus out of me. The resulting confusion made me panic my own parameters into place. So much so, in the freedom of limitless choicefulness I’d literally hear myself think: Right, so it can be anything??? Ok………<eek> …….. Let’s make it 1.5 metres high, made of fabric, and green. I don’t know what it’s going to be, or why, or anything else. But at least I’ve got some clue what it’s going to look like. And then steadfastly refuse to budge from this plan.

And then reverse engineer my ideas from there.

Top tip, folks: Don’t do it this way!

In the absence of any solid grounding I had to pin meanings on to the finished article, blindly, like the tail on a donkey. It didn’t hold up, there was no integrity: just a decorative thing that isn’t an expression of anything.

The whole process was a lot harder than it needed to be, and it didn’t produce good results. I backed myself into a corner and I wasn’t going to let myself out of it for fear of … fear of… fear of the great abyss of everything that’s outside my self imposed boundary, which is too overwhelming to consider.

So sometimes you gotta follow a route to its ultimate destination before accepting the truth of it, turning round, and going someplace else. Destination disappointment (could’ve done better). And eventually, several disappointments later, I did.

I’ll show you where some of these routes led next…

Gaping Void

I love Hugh McLeod’s drawings, and his very succinct way with words.

This cartoon of his is a favorite of mine, those three words speak so much to me. They describe so much.

He wrote a fantastic article on creativity (I looked it up just now to link you to it, to find it’s over 10 years old. It’s stuck with me all that while!)

If you’re a creative (in any field) with a creativity block – artistically constipated – this is a great resource of timeless advice, and a place to go and cogitate on the nature of making.

The Power of ‘Yet’

I love The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, he describes essentially what Buddhism describes: live in the moment, because very simply, that’s all there is.

Today I was thinking about the Power of Yet.

As my thinking shifts from the very rigid what I can do VS what I can’t do – a third option has opened up: what I can’t do yet.

I was looking at the weights in the gym this morning. I’m progressing steadily and loving it. Even the aches. I’ve even embraced the aches. The far bigger part of the battle, more than toughening up the meat of my body, is toughening up the silly little girl whose voice is so pitiful inside my head. (I’m winning her round too). I realised today, what I previously wrote off as impossible, I’m now coming to consider as just not yet. Later. All in good time.

It’s a good feeling.

52/3 – Manifestery

manifesto ~ manifest ~ manifestation

What do I want to manifest this year? I forget now where the idea came from, but I was mulling over these words….Yes, I’m still inhabiting that whole new year, new, newy nonsense. Excuse me if it’s beginning to grate. It will wear off (perhaps) ………….. but y’know I started out 2015 with some fairly specific wants which (and this might be why I’m perpetuating the thing) are panning out pretty well so far.

Targetted, focussed, my most defined wish was to deadlift (at least) 60kg, I was doing 30kg at the end of December. This week I did 40kg. The goal posts are closer than I reckoned on. For context, at the start of October 2014 I laughed at the suggestion of doing weights. ‘I’m not sporty, I just want to be a bit stronger, and bit less, y’know… wobbly and pathetic, maybe tone up a little…’ whilst firmly fixed in my head was the knowledge that lifting weights is a thing that other people do.

And then I tried.

And then I switched over to being one of those other people.

Some amount of sweat, aches and grim determination later, I’ve progressed from someone who lifts the tiniest weights available, a bit more each time.

I’m just using this by way of illustration.

Doing something in one area of life can open the mind in all the others.

This is a lesson I learnt in art school: Separating not being able to do something from not having done that something before.

Or not being good at it, to being not good at it yet.

The same thing, but from a very slightly changed viewpoint, is not exactly the same. Subtle distinctions. Nuances.

I LOVE nuances.

So I set about listing (the power of the written word) the essence of my intentions and what I want to manifest.

My manifesto for 2015:

Follow the Signs.
Stay Focussed: One Thing at a Time.
Always Try New Things, Go New Places, Meet New People, Have New Fun.
Have Love, Be Love, Have Fun, Enjoy
Keep Questioning, Keep Learning, Keep Notes, Keep Ideas, Keep Going.
Reach Beyond, Reach Past, Carry on Beyond the Horizons.

Then as an aside……..

I read an article recently, it was along the lines of how the physical act of writing something embues it with a power, seeing those words written in your own handwriting reinforces something at a very primal level, it is exclusively connected to the writer. Darn it I wish I remebered where this was so I could link you. But, in the small search I made for it, I found this instead. If you have any interest in the whole manifestary musings, take a mo to see this.

So my manifesto is embedded in my psyche, and sits on the opposing page to my vision board/bagua map. As I close the book they smoosh up against each other, and can embue each other with magic as the book rests. Meanwhile, watch this space for future manifestations!

52/3, Bagua Map and Coloured Wordery

Welcome to part next of the weekly unfolding of my year…

I was reading this week about Vision Boards. As my MO in life is heavily weighted toward visual inputs I leapt at this new (to me) strategy. In the words of my inner kid: Squeee I wanna make me a Vision Board!

If you’re intrigued, this is where I started out, and I can’t imagine there’s a better place. Jean Van’t Hul’s Artful Parent site is just brimming with all you could want to set you off, and then a list of books and resources to take you on from there.

I especially liked the way Jean sets out her Vision Board as a bagua map. This is a 3 x 3 grid dividing a physical space into sections representing different aspects of life. It’s origin is in feng shui, but it’s been adopted as a tool in various fields of personal development, self care, life training, newage wishy-washery, right across the board to even include more down-to-earth folks like me (ha!).

So this is the layout, the skeleton of the Vision Board, on which to hang wishes, dreams, intentions, ideas, metaphors and so forth. Jean uses magazine snippings – images and text that inspire and illustrate.

Off on a tangent here – I really love the way an act of creativity shows up so many metaphors for life, cos right off my brain is spinning out: I don’t need all those categories… some just don’t apply and some can be lumped together. (Follow that to it’s natural conclusion and yes, my bagua is just one box with a confused, homogenised version of me sat in the middle, puzzled and pissed off with the whole business. Ok, so I’ll go with the boxes…. But I wouldn’t choose those colours. So, which colours would I choose? where do I find the pictures that are the right colours for each box? or do I find B&W pics that I can colour? or should I do it all in photoshop and fuck it, I can have a digital one as a screen saver instead… <some more time passes>. FFS, brain, take what you’ve got. You can’t afford to dwell on all this not-knowing when there’s a thing to be done. Get on with it!

Life lesson: Just get on and do it. I was pretty certain in the early stages I wouldn’t know what I wanted in each box, or how I was going to set about acheiving it. Also, as it was the thing I wanted in this week’s page, and that’s a fairly rigid time limit, if it spills beyond its alotted time the whole thing will unravel and fall down the rabbit-hole of what am I doing, where am I going and a great big enormous whole what’sthepointofitall. And that’s a place I avoid at all costs.

So I left that part of my brain running round with all the I don’t know what’s going to happen while the rest of me got down to drawing the boxes, writing the words, colouring the colours, and accepting it will probably turn into something, even if I don’t know what (yet).

And, as suspected, it did.

I’ve come to find, if you let go of the wanting to know, the what it is will show up. And often in a surprisingly pleasing fashion.

The words and phrases defining the grid were down: ‘Power, Abundance’, ‘Health, Well-being’, ‘Career, Work’

Curously, just the act of writing these out – and once I let them settle – they began to spawn new words and phrases. Ones I’d already been playing with in the quest to find my Word for the Year, words that encourage possibility. Some of them cropped up again and again (Relax, Nurture, Nourish, Enjoy, Strengthen, Develop…). And magically the crossing over of categories adjusted from the chaotic blur as I had previously seen it as, into a self-supporting web.

Integrity & Solidarity

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You may have seen this video, it’s been spinning about on the web this week, by an artist in distress.

As I watched it I felt the enormity of all it represents well up inside. I wanted to reactively repost and type angrily at the world. But instead I’m sharing it as a message of solidarity, from one artisan to another. From one who has tried, been dismayed, discouraged, ridiculed and dismissed, but been unable to stop. Like a river, creativity can be dammed up, but will always find a way through. The weight of the water being the support this video has garnered.

This darling soul is baring her heart, and it touched me so strongly. She creates beautiful, wearble art. She just wants to make a living. And most importantly, despite the unsolicited opinions of the ignorant masses who shout their unsolicited opinion and sour grape flavoured vitriol, will (I hope) continue to follow her passion. She speaks for many of us.

To everyone who’s living this pain – the anguish (too strong a word? no, I don’t think so) – of having to justify your burning urge to make and share and not defend and rationalise, but just to do. Keep doing, keep making, keep going. We love you, we respect you, we need you to keep going.