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.
daily learning
Do you have daily practices?
I kinda do, but my progress moves like a caterpillar – that scrunching-stretching motion, so while it averages out as daily, it might not always be technically daily.
This is the thing: – I’m acknowledging this now instead of berating myself. I’m learning my rhythms and working within them. I’m letting the process be the lesson.
Since the start of this year I’ve been adding to this book of ‘daily’ doodles. Mostly every day I complete a 1″square. The days when I don’t, I return to, always within a day or two, and as I doodle I reflect back on that day. Sometimes there’s a word or a shape or a scrap of something to glue into the square. Everyday is similar, yet every day is unique.
It’s another unfolding metaphor.
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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.
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outpourings
(today I’ll let the images speak for themselves)
Wishing you all a Wonderful Weekends X
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imaginary animals
Some of the characters I collected in my camera at the V&A last week, having filtered through my imagination, turned up in my art journal.
As they evolved along the way,
some got a little lost under the layers.
faces merge animals and human,
some characters from other projects join them.
As the weekend wore on,
the colours developed
The doodles built up
The tribe became established on the page
I can’t think of any meditation I enjoy more than getting lost in patterns and colours.
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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.
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on a quiet day
Just a couple of weeks ago I found myself cutting out shapes from magazine pages and scrap paper.
Nothing particular in mind, just another odd compulsion. But I’ve been me all these years now, I’m used to this, I don’t give it another thought.
Some good will come of it. Meanwhile, I’ve got a heap of hands and fish and butterflies and cats and things. As you do.
Then this began to evolve.
Now I’m as curious as the next person: What does this mean?
Last year I was doing this (again, no idea why).
So I carry on, still not knowing, but enjoying the bejeepers out of the process.
Perhaps that’s reason enough, right?
The words that I remember as I play join the page, they get buried in the mix.
Somewhere under and amongst these layers sit the words:
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it.
To deprive it of oxygen.
To shame it. To mock it.
…
…
With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories.
Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe
….
…
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this:
We be many and they be few.
They need us more than we need them.
…
…
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
– from Arundhati Roy, War Talk
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the ancient and the absurd
When a birthday falls mid week, mid winter, mid-school holidays (not to mention mid-life) – a less inventively inclined type might find this precludes fun activities – y’know, with friends, outdoors, not surrounded by a gazillion anxty families…. One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to spend it in the office pretending it’s just another day. (Too many years have passed that way – a postponed birthday never really works for anyone over the age of 6)
So taking advantage of being close to London, I took myself off to the V&A.
It’s indoors (even the walk from the tube station is underground and out of the rain) and although families visit, it’s museumy and sedate with minimal shouting and squealing. (Even from me)
I’ve visited many times before, but despite this, hardly begun to see all there is on offer. I didn’t realise how much there was to see until I looked it up just now (thank you wikipedia)
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A), London, is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects.
….
The V&A covers 12.5 acres (51,000 m2)[3] and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5,000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture,medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
Several hours and 4 aching feet later, we sat down for a tea and food before wending our way back post rush hour chaos. Minds were blown. Awe was inspired. The extremes of the ancient, the enormous, the itsy teeny detailed, the extravagant and ornate are all there. Most too amazing for words.
A tiny handful came home in my camera and in my mind’s eye.
Some of these will be characters in future art…
And as always I’m drawn to the abstract imagery, both in the art and in the architecture, it kinda blurs into one big gestalt experience.
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The Story of ONE
My enthusiasm for recycling, for waste-avoidance, for the bigger message of the cut up, my passion for protecting our environment for all who dwell within it. All that, and my (relatively) new found love of collage. ALL THAT – then I see this and WOW! This is an artist who thinks my thinkings and expresses it so loud n clear. Take a few minutes to reach into the treasures that Sandy Parsons has manifested here…
Doom and Gloom!!! Oh glorious, cruel, heartless, murderous, rapacious, malignant, magical, complex, artistic, fascinating, maddening, relentless, ravenous Civilization. What a reality we live in! Despite my abhorrence of all of the atrocities ever committed in Civilization, I appreciate the the arts and culture and the love that does exist only because of it. It’s so so so so complicated. Are the beautiful things begotten here by this insatiable monster worth all of the wars, slavery, deforestation, pollution, racism, sexism, animal torture, greed, political nonsense, climate change, and our looming 6th mass extinction? What used to look to me as fun filled opportunity, now looks more like a hell on Earth and a cancer to the planet. What is Civilization? I’ll explain it more below in the description of the artwork.
If I could sum up this art piece in a quick statement: ONE is basically a commentary on the complete…
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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.
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