Mixy's Art Blog

Courage, Faith, Trust. 33/52

Scribbled things. Filled in with nonsense and part heard words

Dabs, daubs, splosh. Dragged, drawn out, drawn on.

And more, and further. Anemones? meteors? Some frenzied chaos. (I honestly don’t know.)

But as usual, I like the details best of all

The title for this week – Courage, Faith, Trust – came from the same-named scrap of paper that got itself collaged into the frenzy. (it appeared a week early, as it’s numbered 34) but it also calls up the essence of this practice. Courage, Faith and Trust in the process:

Keep showing up, don’t plan, don’t expect, just keep doing and making and going. And all will be well.

Ramping up 32/52

Life is flooding along.

I measure out every one of these weeks and I see it unfurl new aspects, new intrigues.

I don’t always tell you them – are they interesting to anyone but me?
Well, here you go:
These are three new facets of life which entered my world this week …..

The Speakeasy videos from the Wanderlust Festi.
The words are from Danielle Laporte’s talk ‘The Soul of Ambition’

IMG_5440a — *This weeks page is powered by left-overs from another project. (Too many to throw away)*

Tulsi Tea – I’m taking a rest from coffee in the interests of resting my adrenals and settling my cortisol levels. I’ve switched to Tulsi. It’s really grown on me. Yes, I kinda do miss coffee, but as a temporary substitute I’m glad it’s part of my world.

and finally:

Sauerkraut – from my ongoing fascination with all things prebiotic, probiotic & gut biome related.

An eclectic mix. Meanwhile, amid the above the following page took shape thus-ly:

fingerpainting, music and people (31/52)

From this

To this

Collaged in music and people then some proper fingerpainting.

Real, visceral, icky fingerpainting. You want to play now too, don’t you?

The whole process reminds me of weaving: layers show through in places. In and out. Each one adds.

Collage, colour, paint & words. That’s all.

As always (to me) the beauty’s in the details…………………….

Shine 30/52

This week started out, as they invariably do, with no plan, no ideas, just some scraps and a blank(ish) page.
I began with tissue paper. I love the semi-translucent. If you get the right stuff (usually cheap craft tissue) the dye runs beautifully and makes for water-colour kinda effect as soon as it comes in contact with water or glue or hands or pretty much anything. I think this must have been something more fancy, probably saved from gift wrap. (shame)

Anyhoo, it was the usual build up of layers…

There are bits of torn all sorts of paper in there now. I keep the box of scraps for recycling under my work table. There are bits from there. What the bits are don’t matter so much, it’s more just to let some shapes begin to develop.

And then the painting…. more layers

Just playing with the shapes

And there we have it.

Reach Out and You will Shine

See the face? 29/52

Close up, week 29 looked like this…

A lot of layers, a lot of buried words. A lot of rich, warm colour

Did you see the face?

The Egg

Have I told you before about my fascinations with metaphysics? I saw this today, it just bobbed up on my facebook newsfeed ..

Which is funny, because I remember reading this same story some time, like forever or so ago, and it really stuck with me. It made sense. It had a sense of completeness to it that sat comfortably in my mind. But I forgot the name or the writer, or where I’d read it, or the title, and no amount of guess-Googling had brought me back to it. Until this morning. And there it was.

It really made me smile, cos in this last week or so I’ve been reading Mike Dooley’s Manifesting Change, and I’ve also been listening to a bunch of the Abraham Hicks stuff on YouTube. And there are just so many parallels in the way they describe this whole what-are-we-doing-here and what’s-it-all-about-ness and the essence of what I take from this story.

This whole beautiful synchronicity makes me smile inside with such happy. It makes sense to me. I love the whole knitted-togetherness of each of these individually, and then of them altogether collectively. And the metaphor of an egg just seems to fit.

I’ve had some fantastically vivid dreams lately, and two nights ago I had a whole heap of very loud, clear metaphors for new beginnings: planting seeds, young animals (kittens mostly) and eggs. Eggs again! I’m working on some new exciting projects (more of which later) and there’s a really big feeling of new beginningness going on round here!

So that’s how my week is setting out, I hope yours is sprinkled with joy, anticipation and optimism too.

Colour bomb 28/52

This week was full of colour.
Dabs and daubs.
Layer on layer on layer on layer on layer…

Eyes and spirals and circles and more…
Building up over and over and over and more and deeper and lusher and more.

That’s the sorta week it was.

learning in patterns

The process of learning has a lot to do with recognising patterns.

A pattern repeats enough and you can come to trust it.

Then suddenly it changes: Confusion ensues.

I’ve been here before: I’m trotting along, understanding;
each new level of understanding fits comfortably on top of the last and it’s creating a tidy heap of organised information.

I know the routine. I’m cool with this.

Then we turn a corner and I’m lost.
Where did you go?

You were right there in front of me and now you aren’t and I can’t see you and I’m lost.

I don’t get any of it, the words aren’t making sense, the concepts are too big and won’t fit.

Too many options.

Parameters are too wide and I’m looking about for some clues and can only see confusion and fog.

Where am I?

You’ve already clambered up to the next level, so you know it’s possible.You know what I don’t. You see what I can’t.

I just need you to tell me in the right words, explain in a shape I can focus on.

Give me a hand up. I’ll be encouraged to know that where you are is actually a place because you’re there already, but I don’t see how I get from where I am now in my understanding to the dizzying lofty heights you’re occupying.

Hold out your hand and reach out to me.

We both know when I get there I’ll look down and it won’t seem so far.

And from there I can help the next of them climb up too.

reflecting ‘so much more’ 27/52

Every week I create something.

Some weeks I create more.

In fact – most days I create loads – but in terms of the tangible, the painty reality, every week of this year I am creating at least one something: One page of One book of One year

I’m over half way in now, and I’m detecting more and more patterns all the time, every one a metaphor for the unfolding times in which they’re made:

Some weeks start on the first day and incrementally develop a little at a time.
Some weeks are a flurry of fervour, forced into focus in a short few days: blurting out in totality at the start, or squished up against the finishing hours.

They all reflect some underlying aspects, some current cares and the modality of the moment:
Words and feelings ooze in and out.. You might not hear them, but we both know they are there.

Weaving in the elements: internal and external.

There’s what rests on the surface, and there’s so much more.

The surface reflects to you what you project out.
For everyone it’s something personal and new.

Each page, each week, each is contained within a season of interest with the cast of supporting characters who meander about and around my days. These recent weeks have been populated by some images that I printed more than I needed for a project I’ve since finished. Smiling, familiar faces from within the framework that structures these times. Left over faces smile out of these times.

Here from the perspective of a photo I see all that I’d like to do to ‘finish’ the image. But that week has passed so it’s another that I’ll leave as it is, almost ready, a little soft in the middle and a bit raw in places. It’s all ok.
Time pushes on, I’m over the other side of this one now.

digital art – rewind

In a recent post I was telling you about my early beginnings in digital art.

But guess what – turns out there was earlier stuff that I’d totally forgotten about! Pre-dating that by a good couple of years ago or so, there was stuff like this.

This is like rooting through the loft space of my past, ideas and experiments I packed away in the back of my mind and old hard drives.

I look back and remember vividly the delight of discovery in this myriad of new possibility. There was no limit in my mind as to what could be spun out of this magic.

OF everything I made in these early days, this is the one I loved the most.

I called it Fireglass, and I was entranced and enchanted by this little image.

But that was the thing I suddenly came to realise – this was such a little image.

Such a very little image.

At the point I made it – which was by some mental abberation of a puppy in exuberant scampering mode, delirious in uncharted territory so of course I couldn’t accurately back track that one – and I had no grasp of pixel size.

No idea at all that the resolution at which this freakishly gorgeous little gem arrived on my screen meant it would print out at not much more than 1 inch square.

And even then not at especially sharp quality.

This little glowing rectangle of orangy red joy was what really kicked me into the next level: from play and unchanneled driftless clicking, now I wanted to take control over this alchemy. I went from careering about unchallenged by anything to navigating my way toward a more deliberate composition.

I was embarking on a massive adventure.